Why you shouldn’t know too much about your own genes
By Carolyn Johnson,
Washington Post
| 09. 11. 2015
Untitled Document
This summer, a panel of genetics experts did something surprising: they put out a list of genetic tests people should not get.
In the age of precision medicine, the genome is our oyster. There are cancer wonder drugs that pinpoint the errant genes that drive tumors. There are longstanding medical mysteries finally being unraveled by DNA sequencing. There is tremendous excitement over the coming age of treatments tailored to you. And there is also this: a very long list of genes for which the best medical understanding of what they mean for our health is essentially a shrug.
The poster child for the uncertainty underlying much of the information in this brave new world is a gene called MTHFR. It produces an important enzyme, but many medical geneticists simply sigh when they hear the gene's clumsy acronym name.
This gene has made its way on to the do-not-test list more than once, because in almost no cases do the tests have any medical utility. Meanwhile, alternative medicine practitioners and Web sites have stepped up their claims that many people --...
Related Articles
By Annika Inampudi, Science | 07.10.2025
Before a baby in the United States reaches a few days old, doctors will run biochemical tests on a few drops of their blood to catch certain genetic diseases that need immediate care to prevent brain damage or other serious...
By Geoffrey A. Fowler, The Washington Post | 07.17.2025
Nearly 2 million people protected their privacy by deleting their DNA from 23andMe after it declared bankruptcy in March. Now it’s back with the same person in charge — and I still don’t trust it.
Nor do the attorneys general...
By Elizabeth Dwoskin and Yeganeh Torbati, The Washington Post | 07.16.2025
A group of well-heeled, 30-something women sat down to dinner last spring at a table set with pregnancy-friendly mocktails and orchids, ready to hear a talk about how to optimize their offspring.
Noor Siddiqui, the founder of an embryo-screening start-up...
By Suzanne O'Sullivan, New Scientist | 07.09.2025
Rare diseases are often hard to spot. They can evade detection until irreversible organ damage or disability has already set in. Last month, in the hope of preventing just this type of harm, the UK’s health secretary, Wes Streeting, announced...