Know yourself (genes and all)

Dec 16, 2015, 03:05 PM

How much privacy would you give up for a shot at better health and a longer life? How about pooling data from your genome? And if your genome could tell you what might be coming — cancer, Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis — would you want to know? Might you go so far as to seek to get that gene edited out? New technologies make much of this possible; scientists are weighing the risks, rewards and ethical considerations. This take on the subject comes from a recent gathering of top geneticists from around the world at BGI in the southern Chinese city, Shenzhen.