Originally posted by Richard Finney
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Does the purchaser of any good or service require sophisticated knowledge of costs and benefits?
Can't someone who has the BRCA1 mutation decide "well, I need to start mammograms at age 30", or if they don't "well, I'll wait until later in life"?
Breast cancer is at least easy to subsequently screen for (though mammograms aren't without risk, see the recent reasons for the changes in screening), for many other clinically relevant changes this may not be the case. What do we expect people to do when told (possibly incorrectly!) that they're at increased risk for Alzheimer's or Parkinson's? There's no screen for those and the increased risk due to a random SNP is actually going to be quite small. Those will combine to yield some unfortunate results...
More information is good. People taking personal charge of their health is a good thing.
Even if there's strong evidence that knowledge is bad, is it right to outlaw it?
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