I just listened to a really interesting podcast with Robert Plomin, a behavioural geneticist, talking about how most people (outside the scientific community) are not aware how strongly the genes we inherit from our parents influence a whole range of our behaviours and our propensity develop certain negative conditions as a result, including obesity, alcoholism, depression, addiction etc. Basically, that nature is a lot stronger than nurture, whereas most people think the opposite.
The interviewer asked him “so what’s the point of people trying to avoid these negative outcomes, if they are destined by their genes to fall into these behaviours and end up with these conditions?”. Plomins response was that if the specific genes relating to a specific negative behaviour could be identified by screening at the individual level, people could be made aware of their susceptibility, and they could proactively take steps to avoid falling blindly into those behaviours that lead to obesity / alcoholism etc.
Would you want to know? Would it lead you to take pre-emptive action? If you knew that you had a genetic predisposition towards developing alcoholism, would you want to know, so that you can make a more informed choice about your drinking habits etc?
And what about for your children? Would you want to know if your child was very susceptible to developing depression or addiction problems before it happened?
I don’t know where I sit on this but will leave voting on as...
YABU: I don’t want to know, I’d rather take my chances
YANBU: I’d want to know, so that I can take positive action