Health & Medicine If you were genetically predisposed for incurable disease, would you want to know?

Would you want to know if your DNA put you at high risk for incurable disease?

  • Yes

    Votes: 5 41.7%

  • No

    Votes: 7 58.3%
  • Total voters
    12
Second Summer

Second Summer

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Let's say you had done one of those DNA tests to learn about your ancestry, would you also want to learn about your risk for genetically determined incurable diseases? (I'm asking because I'm interested in doing one of those ancestry tests myself.)

“These tests have the potential to cause great distress,” said Anna Middleton, head of society and ethics research at the Wellcome Genome Campus in Cambridge. “Companies should make counselling available, before and after people take tests.” The issue is raised in a paper by Middleton and others in the journal Future Medicine.
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More: Warnings over shock dementia revelations from ancestry DNA tests (26. August 2017)
 
If it's incurable, I'd say there is no point in knowing. Knowing only matters if you can do something directly about it.

The best thing you can do is plan way ahead for your inevitable death (everyone eventually dies). In other words, as soon as you get your first job out of college, sign up for the maximum life insurance you can afford, making your family the beneficiary.

That way, your untimely death won't impact you loved ones financially.
 
How can you be sure it's incurable?

Yes, it might be considered incurable by today's standard of medicine, but that might not necessarily mean there are no ways at all to make your situation better, if you know about it in time...
 
As long as I can't prevent it with changes in my lifestyle, I don't want to know. If I can prevent it or lower the risk a lot with changes in my lifestyle, then I would like to know.

I have a incurable illness. My EoE. Perhaps it will come a cure in the future, perhaps not. Some cases it can be herritaged down to children, some cases not. A very few cases it can be deadly (if it goes to your lungs and heart), but most likely not for me as I was grown up when it first hit hard. I don't want to know if I will loose my ability to eat and drink in the future example.
 
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