Anyone had any of their personal genetic code sequenced or genotyped for susceptibilty to inheritable diseases? I believe it still costs tens of thousands of dollars to get your entire DNA sequenced, but some places, like 23andMe.com, offer to genotype about a million (out of about 10 to 30 million) of the most "common" variants for a cost of 0.099 AMU ($99).
No diagnosis is made, just probabilities are presented. The analysis is done entirely by machine on saliva samples, and no medical professionals by name are directly involved, so I personally wouldn't report this on a future medical if I did decide to have it done. Given 23andMe's privacy policy and that it probably isn't covered by health insurance anyway, I can't see that the FAA could know or even care if I did it.
At that cost I'll probably do it just out of curiosity, if naught else. One reason I hesitate at all is because I'm not sure that I can do anything differently than I do now (healthy lifestyle choices) for most of the diseases they report on. But I suppose a higher probability of, for example, prostate cancer might make me have more frequent checks. The other hesitation is figuring out how much access to give them to the genotyping for use in their research and that of others.
No diagnosis is made, just probabilities are presented. The analysis is done entirely by machine on saliva samples, and no medical professionals by name are directly involved, so I personally wouldn't report this on a future medical if I did decide to have it done. Given 23andMe's privacy policy and that it probably isn't covered by health insurance anyway, I can't see that the FAA could know or even care if I did it.
At that cost I'll probably do it just out of curiosity, if naught else. One reason I hesitate at all is because I'm not sure that I can do anything differently than I do now (healthy lifestyle choices) for most of the diseases they report on. But I suppose a higher probability of, for example, prostate cancer might make me have more frequent checks. The other hesitation is figuring out how much access to give them to the genotyping for use in their research and that of others.