The Book of Me, 2nd Edition (Autobiographical Journal)

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He responds by asking me why I’m not eating any of the delicious Afghani meat dishes spread in front of us. Laid out in a line the diameter of a penny, the base pairs of the genome would circle the earth about three times.

The Book of Me, 2nd Edition (Autobiographical Journal The Book of Me, 2nd Edition (Autobiographical Journal

I have nine genetic variants associated with increased risk of colorectal cancer, but ten associated with decreased risk. I might learn of susceptibilities for ALS or Crohn’s disease or schizophrenia or prostate, bladder, or lung cancer. He grows excited when he envisions clients matching their personal genomic information against all of the world’s available genetic findings and letting the coordinating software find relevant news stories, treatments, suggestions for behavioral change, specific advice about personally tailored medications, professionals you might profitably consult, specialists you might want to meet, foods you should seek out or avoid… Knome, it seems, is in a race to become a genomic combination of Google, Bloomberg box, and WebMD. All those books wrestle with the limits of the human—whether to accept them nobly or rage against them all the way to death. Even adding in other kinds of mutations—insertions, deletions, and variations in the number of copies of certain genes—any two of us are likely to be 99.Bound to each bead are tens of thousands of identical short fragments of DNA, each roughly 135 base pairs long. The day is beautiful, and as I walk through the historic downtown, several people with an array of accents stop and ask me to take their photos. I imagine all the new identity crimes that cheap whole-genome scans invite—genetic blackmail, forgery, even framing someone at the scene of a crime. The luxury of the personal genome will soon be tightly integrated into health care, one more node in a high-tech network of death-defying miracles that we keep getting better at habituating to.

The Book of Me, 2nd Edition (Autobiographical Journal) The Book of Me, 2nd Edition (Autobiographical Journal)

On some days, in Illinois, waiting for my results, I imagine that my future doctor visits will feel more or less unchanged: _Am I dying? Since 2006, gene-scan studies have found more than one hundred DNA variants that contribute to about forty maladies ranging from restless leg syndrome to ALS. That’s proactive medicine: For better or worse, the days of the unassailable doctor-priests are over.

He also predicts that all newborns might one day be subject to routine whole-genome scans, holding out hope for all kinds of early detection and intervention. Most impressive of all, the sequencing would be free, provided the volunteers made their information publicly available. Even this more abbreviated readout would take months to complete, require the efforts of dozens of people, and produce a volume hundreds of thousands of pages long whose intricate networks of interacting chemical protagonists hinted at dramatic interactions beyond anyone’s ability to interpret, let alone follow. He wrote back saying that as long as I could pass an exam demonstrating a master’s-degree level of understanding about genetics, they could use me. Bench after bench of gear from asks to electronic black bos all seem poised on the verge of some new refinement.

The Book of Me: A Children’s Journal of Self-Knowledge: a

Both my grandfathers died of heart attacks before I was born, and my grandmothers never spoke of their ancestors, let alone any family medical history. In the States, the company has had the most interest from Hollywood moguls and Wall Street hedge-fund managers. Well, I don’t think there’s a huge difference between high-level behavioral traits, low-level behavioral traits, and physical traits,” he says. But he concedes that all of recent health care has been pushing toward a fuller engagement of the patient in risk assessment and treatment evaluation.Jorge Conde is a poised, business-casual man in his early thirties who insists on holding doors open for me. But I think of all the couples, in the years to come, who will study their own genomes out of concern over what they might hand down to their offspring.

The Book of Me, 2nd Edition (Autobiographical Journal)

I point to naive public discussions about single genes that supposedly cause alcoholism, aggression, or homosexuality. Last summer Richard Powers decided he did and became one of nine people on earth to have his entire genome sequenced. He’s curious to see, for instance, whether a person who learns he has several specific genes that predispose him to lung cancer might finally be motivated to quit smoking. He’s optimistic about the average person’s ability to understand what’s happening in the genomic revolution.Contains hundreds of guided questions organized into sections about your past, present, and future, family history, and inner self. Proteins are the workhorse molecules that participate in every essential aspect of the body’s chemistry and structure. My Google Earth map has just become a good deal crisper and more reliable across the board, and commercial sequencing has just halved in cost, once again.