Commercial DNA testing can predict our chances of contracting certain diseases. And LORI ANDERSON is all for it
THERE is an inscription on the wall at Delphi that has driven the great thinkers throughout the ages. It has inspired philosophers to ruminate on the true essence of man; its universal truth has driven vision quests among Native American tribes and i
t continues to form the spiritual basis of today's 12-step programme of recovery: Know Thyself.
Never has this tenet been more attainable. The Romans may have had their augurs who divined the auspices, but today we have our own act of necromancy that will call up the spirits of our past in order to predict our future. That is if the "Terminator" doesn't get in our way.
The magic of which I write is the Human Genome Project, which has unravelled the essence of life and its spin-off for the consumer: DNA testing, which can show your proclivity towards everything from male-pattern baldness and the alcohol flush reaction to breast and ovarian cancer.
Until last month, early adopters in California were writing cheques for $1,000, then six weeks later switching off their mobile phones, to lose themselves in the sweet self-absorption of studying their deepest, most intrinsic selves.
While some of the results, such as eye and hair colour, can be gleaned from looking in a mirror, others, such as the predicted chance of a killer disease, could once only be ascertained via an autopsy.
Last month, however, the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, put his big leather biker boot down and ordered "cease and desist" notices to be sent to the companies offering the service, such as 23andMe.
His concern was that the knowledge might be too much for some of us to bear without proper medical counselling. The Terminator, it would seem, does not want us to travel to the underworld without Virgil.
Although I see the logic in his reasoning, I do not wish to see genetic testing and the gift I believe it can bear locked up in a doctor's black Gladstone bag. What is important here is how to interpret the results of the tests; depending on your personality and outlook on life, they maybe viewed with the whimsy of fortune-telling or the grim finality of a death sentence.
But I'll tell you one thing: I can't wait to swipe my credit card and bathe in an orgy of onanistic self-obsession last enjoyed by Narcissus.
Mendel, the father of genetics, only had his sweet peas to study, but I've got the whole of me.
Well, not quite. To sequence my entire genome would break the bank. The current price is an eye-watering £175,000. However, for £500, 23andMe will extract my DNA from a saliva sample and run it through a machine that will perform a genomic scan to examine 600,000 places in my DNA where variations occur, showing everything from my hair and eye colour and ethnic ancestry to diseases to which I may be prone.
In comparison, when the police perform DNA analysis, they examine only 13 different locations.
The results will list 25 conditions and diseases, such as age- related macular degeneration, lupus, multiple sclerosis and colorectal cancer, with my chance of contracting each condition as a percentage relative of the general population – eg, 50 per cent more likely to contract colorectal cancer. I truly believe that knowledge is power and, as many conditions can be modified with lifestyle changes, such as diet and exercise, I can't wait to pore over this scientific love letter to me.
I do accept that not all men are created equal; those who are predisposed to a more Gothic temperament may find themselves plunging down an oubliette into the depths of melancholia, and this may well be Arnie's point.
Several academic studies have shown, however, that the majority of those with a family history of diseases such as Huntington's or BRCA (breast cancer) mutations would rather not know, with one paper even being titled What You Don't Know Can Hurt You.
Even if my results did show an increase in my chances of developing a disease such as Alzheimer's, for which there would be no action I could take to decrease my risk, I would see it as a wonderful gift of prescience.
The one thing none of us will ever know is the day and manner of our death, but here would be a memento mori to sit on my shoulder, to help me to squeeze every bit of goodness out of my life today, to breathe the air more deeply, follow the beauty of the seasons and, for each day, in the words of Thoreau, stand in awe of my body.
The geneticist James Wilson, of EthnoAncestry, whose company offers genetic genealogy and ancestry testing, explains that, in Donald Rumsfeld's terminology, there are the known unknowns.
"The huge problem is that this only works when you have enumerated all the risk factors," he argues. "Say there are 100 genes (ie, 100 markers] which are involved in diabetes risk. We know of 18 of these today. Even the best scan can only pick these up. If they say you are at a very increased risk, we don't know how this relates to the real risk, as the other 82 might say you have a lower risk. We are only seeing some of the picture.
"It is like a deck of cards – red cards increase your chances of getting the disease, black cards decrease your chances. Taking this test is like turning over five cards only and leaving the rest of the deck unturned."
And yet it is a test I would like to take. As true wisdom is eternal, I return to Apollo's temple at Delphi to ruminate over another inscription: "Nothing in excess." Not even me.
The full article contains 995 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
