The Cure For Everything by Timothy Caulfield

Author:Timothy Caulfield
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Beacon Press

Given the underwhelming performance of gene therapy and predictive testing, much of the current genetics rhetoric is focused on using genetic information to encourage people to adopt a healthy lifestyle. The watchword is prevention. The plan: People can obtain their individual genetic information and use it to make decisions about what to eat, what kind of exercise to take up, and what kind of regular surveillance testing to submit to. If a person’s genes show that he’s slightly more likely than his neighbors to contract a particular disease, might he be motivated to take evasive action? (“I am at increased risk for heart disease. I had better start exercising and eating right!”) This is the prevention strategy Frances Collins alluded to in his New England Journal of Medicine article in which the hypothetical patient mustered the motivation to quit smoking when “confronted with the reality of his own genetic data.”

In the past few years, the popular culture has seen a large increase in articles and companies putting forward the notion that genetic information should be used to personalize lifestyles and help people become proactive in ensuring their health. A company that goes by the name of My DNA Fragrance will, for instance, produce perfume from your DNA; as the website says, “Every person’s DNA blueprint is different. So no two fragrances will smell the same.” The health side of the equation is even broader. You can order (allegedly) genetically personalized sports drinks, nutritional supplements, and exercise programs. Genetics is being sold as a path to an individualized, healthy lifestyle, not only by almost all direct-to-consumer genetics testing companies, but also by many researchers working in the field. The message of Navigenics, the biggest competitor to 23andMe, exemplifies this pervasive prevention ethos; they claim that their “goal is to empower you with genetic insights to help motivate you to improve your health.” They also claim that they can provide you with information to answer questions about which diet, exercise, and medical tests and screening will “help you most” and are “really right for you.”

There are, as I see it, two problems with the idea of using genetic information for the purposes of prevention and/or personalizing your lifestyle. The first we have already touched on—the research simply hasn’t uncovered genes that provide highly predictive information. The second relates to what individuals do with this information, a point I’ll elaborate on momentarily.

The idea of personalizing your lifestyle with the help of genetic information looks to be almost as big a bust as gene therapy. In a 2008 article in the New York Times, David Goldstein, a geneticist from Duke University, stated, “There is absolutely no question that for the whole hope of personalized medicine, the news has been just about as bleak as it could be.” He went on to note, “After doing comprehensive studies for common diseases, we can explain only a few percent of the genetic component of most of these traits . . . It’s an astounding thing that we

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