The scientific film-Cracking Your Genetic Code inspired me to reconsider the meaning of fear. If someone got a disease, does his fear come from the suffering from guessing, planning or imaging his unpredictable future or the real disease causes him to suffer. In other words, people may tend to think those who got diseases are poor because they have to suffer from the pain caused by the disease and they might have a shorter or more restricted life compared with normal people. However, the suffer of someone’s guessing before he or she was ‘officially’ informed to have a disease is also painful, or even more painful sometimes. Some people choose to suicide not because they have the disease but probably because they are tired of the mental breakdown or nervous tension. They just want to get rid of the ‘mental disease’.
Then, as the film introduced, our society is going to develop a technique by which people can foresee their disease by checking their genetic code. Of course, it is a powerful method and one of the most significant scientific movements which is great to our society. However, if we reconsider the information the technique provide, are we actually willing to take it? Are you feeling better if you were told that your genes said that you would have a disease? It is good for the genes to be ‘transparent’ to me but sometimes I would rather choose to stay unknown and foolish since sometimes, the fear from disease is from the fear of having the disease.
You make an interesting point. Is knowledge power, or is ignorance bliss? It really comes down to the nature of the disease you’re talking about; genes for some diseases like Huntington’s are easy to identify but impossible to prevent, but others (like genes that predispose people to certain forms of breast cancer) could put someone on the lookout for the disease and potentially preventing it. Of course, there are very blurry lines: what about a disease like Alzheimer’s that might have an element of genetic predisposition and can sometimes be ameliorated by certain treatments, but are by and large is irreversible? I can’t say for sure what I would do were I offered a test that could tell me whether or not I’ll develop Alzheimer’s.
I share your concerns with whether human want the info or not. In fact it is something that technologoical progresses shares. I still remember the perfect memory shown in the Black Mirror. Maybe people should think through the implications before they release world-changing technology.
This is similar to a question that I get asked sometimes: if you could, would you choose to know how you die? Answers to both sides of this seem less than ideal; by knowing, you live everyday in anticipation of that event, but by not knowing, you live everyday in fear of the unknown future. As for the role of genetic analysis in predicting the future, I would personally steer clear of any science involving things of this nature. Checking genetic codes for diseases may naturally tempt some to modify genes, which would lead to a string of more issues and debates in our society.