Richard Descoings

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If you could see into your future, would you want to? If you could know whether you’re going to contract Alzheimer’s, or if you’re likely to battle cancer or die of heart disease, would you want to? Last summer Richard Powers decided he did and became one of nine people on earth to have his entire genome sequenced. Here, a glimpse into his—and your—future

I come from a long line of folks, on my mother’s side, with congenital difficulty making choices. My father’s family, on the other hand, are born snap deciders. This time the paternal genes won out, and half an hour after reading the invitation, I was on board.

So I went shopping. A day online gave me my first taste of the bewildering range of consumer genetic products. There was Family Tree DNA, specializing in tracing genetic genealogies. There was DNA Direct, whose Web site asked, “Do you have a chronic, undiagnosed condition? It could be genetic.” For $260, I could get tested for cystic fibrosis; for $370, I could learn whether I’m at elevated risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Then there was Iceland-based deCODEme (“This is myCODE”), which could calculate my risks for twenty-five genetic maladies in one $985 package.
But why stop with just a few disease tests? As I always say, in for a few plot complications, in for the whole story.

Among the most visible of new genotyping services was 23andMe, with their slogan “Genetics just got personal.” Their attractive pastel home page wondered, “What do your genes say about you? Who were your ancient ancestors? Do you have your mother’s sense of taste?” For $999, a signed consent with legal waiver, and a cupful of spit, 23andMe would look at 600,000 SNPs—single-nucleotide  polymorphisms, or individual points of possible variance—within the 6 billion base pairs of my diploid genome. I could then use the site’s interactive tools to browse the data and learn what my mutations mean.

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