For $5,000.00USD, you can get your entire DNA chain mapped — and it will reveal the very essence of who you are and what makes you. 


Do you want to know your DNA for that price?  Would you want to know if the price were free? 

Are you tempting the fate of the Gods by using science and technology to replace the Death of the old God?

Such a price [$5,000.00] would represent another step toward the long-sought
goal of the “$1,000 genome.” At that price point it might become
commonplace for people to obtain their entire DNA sequences, giving
them information on what diseases they might be predisposed to or what
drugs would work best for them.

“It’s a shockingly low price,”
said George M. Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard who is an
adviser to Complete Genomics and to several other sequencing companies.

Then again, the cost of DNA sequencing has dropped by a factor
of 10 every year for the last four years, a faster rate of decline than
even for computers, Dr. Church said.

Even though science can, and will, eventually reveal every secret of the world — do we want to know those unknowns? 

Can we handle the truth of the discovery of the scientific process — or do we need the protection of the dark unknowing?

Are we inherently brittle to breaking or strong against bending? 

Having our DNA chains broken down will reveal those weaknesses and strengths — and the law must quickly attend to the rising rush of scientific discovery to protect the process from undue interference from the meek, and to promise the revelations of the strong will not wound the genetically inferior or punish those with small bumps or medium breaks in their DNA that makes them more vulnerable to those with superior chains.

It may be anti-evolutionary to protect the weak from their inherent ills and weaknesses, but science demands our willingness to leap ahead of our internals to proactively help those less able to help themselves — because the more we learn about each other — the less secrets there are to tell.

10 Comments

  1. I don’t think I want to know, David. It’s a lot of money. I guess if my doctor told me that it would help heal something inside me, it would be worth it. Would insurance cover it?

  2. That’s a great question, Anne! Would insurance pay for DNA sequencing to see if you really needed an operation or not? Right now, they won’t because it will be too expensive, but as the price falls, they’ll likely require it before providing any services at all in the future.

  3. Hi David,
    I would go for it. It’s better to be alert about my own system – leads to a healthy life!

  5. Hi David,
    You are right, prevention is always better.
    Tell me something – did you change the taglines in the header for all your blogs?
    It looks different…I think I am slightly late to notice it – as usual!

  6. You have an exceptional eye for detail, Katha! I’ve been playing around with the tagline on this site to try to make it clearer and more focused. I haven’t changed any of the taglines on any of the other blogs.

  7. Yeah, I didn’t realise it unless the smooth reading got a slight bump – why “against?”
    You had the same tagline in the Wordpunk since its inception? Then it’s my mistake.

  8. Good questions, Katha. I haven’t changed the WordPunk tagline since it started. Some blog templates publish the tagline and others do not so the taglines may have gone missing in the past.
    I decided yesterday to try “against” because it has more drama and conflict than just having the technology sitting there doing nothing. Do you have a better idea? Was there a previous tagline you liked better?

  9. Hi David,
    Yes, that’s it! I might have missed the tagline for Wordpunk – I guess.
    I like the second one better – I will let you know if I think of something else!

  10. I appreciate your feedback, Katha. Yes, the WordPunk tagline has not changed a word since I started it a year ago. The RelationShaping tagline has changed several times to try to be clear and precise as the blog evolves.

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