23andMe vs. Epigenetics
I have just finished enjoying Thomas Goetz’s recent post about predictive medicine, along with the corresponding Wired articles about the topic. He raises significant topics that merit discussion and consideration, one of which I’d like to address here.
On the last page of the Wired piece (in what seems like a separate sidebar article), he mentions many of the factors that, in addition to genes, could impact the likelihood of susceptibility to a particular illness. Smoking, diet, exercise, pathogens, viruses, the microbiome, and, finally, epigenetics, ‘changes to the ways genes function without changes in the actual gene sequence.’
I’ve talked about epigenetics before, remember? This area of genetic study includes the way that beliefs can contribute to gene activation.
Here’s a thought experiment: Your genes say that you’ve got a 30% chance of getting a heart attack. Finding out that you’ve got a 30% chance might provoke you into changing your behavior towards diet, exercise and smoking (although it may well not, as you indicate in the article). At the same time, epigenetics says that your belief that you’re susceptible to heart attacks can in fact create a greater likelihood of suffering one.
Is it worth learning about the 30% chance to begin with?
23andMe’s service isn’t diagnostic, but imagine the average consumer: the one who doesn’t question her doctor and opens emails from deposed Nigerian dictators. A 30% risk to that person is definitive and deterministic. This isn’t a joke, either; people have committed suicide over the possibility of as-yet-unmanifested diseases.
At VortexDNA, our work is focused on the way that the human experience is governed by human intention, which is in turn governed by the mathematics of complex systems. The ability to represent a person’s purpose, values and life focus algorithmically has predictive characteristics.
This science has profound implications for the offerings of 23andMe and similar companies, and it takes the question of human empowerment and freedom to another level altogether. The people doing gene-sequencing say that you are empowered to run around trying to prevent diseases you may never have gotten. VortexDNA and epigenetics say you are empowered to live exactly the life you want, with no limitations.
Which one do you prefer?
