Tuesday, July 01, 2003
Genetic Testing
It was 3 years ago that scientists announced they had completed mapping the basic sequence of human DNA. What does this mean for you and me, probably not much but for our children and children's children it could mean a future where disease is genetically cured in infancy if not later. But what about today, what can you do with this information today. One, perhaps unsettling, thing you can do is have your genome sequenced and scanned for literally hundreds of diseases and your propensity to get things like cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, or even have a heart attack. The question then becomes is this a good idea?
Would you want to know if you would get any disease in advance of it actually happening? I'm not sure, I think it depends on whether there's a cure or not. On the other hand, perhaps you might live your life differently, take more chances or do more things in the time alloted to you. If you knew you had a better than even chance of getting say cancer, would you maybe contribute more to cancer societies and research? Would this speed up the process of finding a cure? Public health funds may be better allocated if the public knew of their chances of getting disease "X".
I have to bring some religion into this I suppose so here goes. What would happen if more folks of the religious right knew they were going to get Parkinson's? I wonder if the cries of the supposed immorality of stem cell research in the U.S. would ebb some. For sure some would still claim that it's wrong but if it presented a cure I'd be willing to bet that it would be a little less evil to quite a few.
It was 3 years ago that scientists announced they had completed mapping the basic sequence of human DNA. What does this mean for you and me, probably not much but for our children and children's children it could mean a future where disease is genetically cured in infancy if not later. But what about today, what can you do with this information today. One, perhaps unsettling, thing you can do is have your genome sequenced and scanned for literally hundreds of diseases and your propensity to get things like cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, or even have a heart attack. The question then becomes is this a good idea?
Would you want to know if you would get any disease in advance of it actually happening? I'm not sure, I think it depends on whether there's a cure or not. On the other hand, perhaps you might live your life differently, take more chances or do more things in the time alloted to you. If you knew you had a better than even chance of getting say cancer, would you maybe contribute more to cancer societies and research? Would this speed up the process of finding a cure? Public health funds may be better allocated if the public knew of their chances of getting disease "X".
I have to bring some religion into this I suppose so here goes. What would happen if more folks of the religious right knew they were going to get Parkinson's? I wonder if the cries of the supposed immorality of stem cell research in the U.S. would ebb some. For sure some would still claim that it's wrong but if it presented a cure I'd be willing to bet that it would be a little less evil to quite a few.
