Riskier to know — or not to know — you’re predisposed to a disease?
Health Riskier to know — or not to know — you’re predisposed to a disease? ‘DNA isn’t a crystal ball for every kind of illness’ but potential benefits outweigh fears, says geneticist Sy Boles Harvard Staff Writer July 1, 2025 7 min read Robert Green. Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer Part of the Tightrope series Exploring how risk shapes our decisions. Congratulations! You have a newborn baby. She has plump cheeks, a round little belly, and the right number of fingers and toes. Everything seems just dandy. But unbeknownst to you, a risk is hiding in her DNA: some percent chance that later in life she’ll develop high cholesterol and have a heart attack in her 40s. Maybe it’s a 5 percent chance. Maybe it’s 80. Would you want to know? Robert Green would. Green is the director of Genomes2People, a research program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Broad Institute, and Harvard Medical School that explores the impacts of using genomic information in...