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Should Patients Have the Option To Not Know Their DNA?
An anonymous reader writes "Genome sequencing is getting faster and cheaper every year. This article points out that in the not-too-distant future, a DNA test will be a common diagnostic tool for doctors. It's a good thing for figuring out what's wrong with you — but there will unintended consequences. The test will also return information about conditions and diseases you're likely to get, which will spur more frequent testing — which can be extremely uncomfortable and/or expensive — as well as more frequent worrying. Should people be able to opt-out of this knowledge? Even if they do, should the information go into the patient's medical record? It likely will, and then the next doctor may be in the difficult position of not knowing what she can discuss with the patient. A new decision from the American College of Medical Genetics has recommended giving patients the option of not having the information gathered at all. It can get more complicated, too: '[G]eneticists and bioethicists are already discussing scenarios where patients may approach such decisions more like a menu, saying they want to know about increased risk of heart disease but not cancer, for example.'"
This is false due to the problems that arise from psychosomatic influence if the knowledge.
Just knowing that you have a chance to be inflicted with illness will likely increase chance to get this illness, or at least some of its symptoms, causing the real problems.
This is why dispensing knowledge to patients is always difficult. Not only must doctor consider the illness itself, but also the psychosomatic effect of knowledge on the patient.