Mapping My Genome, Peeking Into a Scary Future

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-17/search-genome-as-tennis-thrice-weekly-no-barrier-to-decoded-dna.html

On the fourth floor of a red brick medical building in Boston’s South End is an office where few want to go -- where people get a frequently unwelcome glimpse of their future through a careful reading of their DNA.

My chair faces Aubrey Milunsky, co-director of Boston University School of Medicine’s Center for Human Genetics. Women have been told here they’re harboring breast cancer genes. Men have learned they may develop incurable Huntington’s disease. Parents have been informed their child may die before they do.

Why, Milunsky asked during that visit in May, was I thinking about getting all my DNA decoded, a procedure that would give me a complete transcript of the instructions for making and operating my heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, skin, and brain? A 53-year-old father of two, I run a mile every day and play tennis three times a week. I most likely have decades of health in front of me. Yet hidden among the letters of the genetic code may be flaws that foretell horrible lethal diseases that he’s seen hundreds of times before.

“Why would you want to know that?” asked Milunsky, the author of “Your Genes, Your Health: A Critical Family Guide That Could Save Your Life” (Oxford University Press, 2011). “Why would you want to do that to yourself and your family? Why cast a blanket of gloom and doom over them? What good does it do you to have such dire information when there’s nothing you can do about it? I wouldn’t recommend it.”

[Chemisse]

1. I'd rather not know all this.

I just wouldn't want to know so much information about my health risks.

As far as how I am going to die, I'd just say to the Powers that may or may not Be, "Surprise me."

[MineralMan]

2. Of one thing, I'm absolutely certain.

I will die. At age 66, now, there's no telling how soon or long from now that will happen. Learning what I might die from is not a high priority for me.

For younger people, there is an additional caution. Once you have these tests, they will surely become part of your medical history. If you ever lose your health insurance for some reason, you will be uninsurable if there's a marker in your DNA for some disease.

None of us know when we will die, but it is an absolute certainty that we all will. Why stress over what it is that will kill you? You could get killed in a car accident tomorrow on your way somewhere.

Live! Live while you are alive, and let death take care of itself when it's your time.