Stanford scientist Steve Quake was only the fifth person in the world to have his entire genetic code -”“ his genome ”” spelled out last summer. Now he claims to be the first to use it to find out just what diseases he’s at risk for, and what he should do about it.
It’s been an instructive exercise. He and his colleagues say it holds many lessons for how to handle the flood of genomic information that’s on the horizon.
“I think the information can help people live better, but it won’t do it all by itself,” says Hank Greely, a Stanford ethicist involved with the project. “Just dumping data on people will not lead to better results.”