We Might Not Want to Know the Dark Secrets Lurking in Our Genes

Genetics has advanced to the point that we can sequence a person's genome, outlining their entire genetic blueprint, for a couple thousand dollars — perhaps even less — in approximately a day (provided you already have the million-dollar machine on hand).

That's far less than than the $3 billion it cost to first sequence a human genome, and many researchers agree that we're heading towards a time where we'll all have our genomes sequenced.

"That's certainly the vision of the future," says George Annas, a bioethicist at Boston University.

But there's one big problem with that: Once we're good enough at reading a DNA sequence to really interpret all the results — rather than just glean a few hints here and there — we may not want to know the answers.

The problem is that knowing the answers doesn't mean we'll know how to solve anything. There would be a high likelihood of identifying many ticking time-bombs or risks that we would still have no way of addressing. That could mean living an entire life knowing that you are, in a...