What benefit will there be? And why do you assume that it won't be accompanied by negatives? The problem with all tech is that people direct its use, and the sole agent of evil in this world is people.
Knowing your genetic information is currently of limited value for the majority of people, this I admit. I believe that in the future, however, the promise of precision medicine will be realized, and that having one's genetic information readily available will be crucial to receiving the best treatment possible for many diseases.
For example, take Crohn's Disease (and other inflammatory diseases more generally). The current thinking is that it is highly influenced by genetics, and that a number of different genotypes exist that can result in the phenotype we refer to as Crohn's Disease. It's conceivable that having a better understanding of someone's specific genotype could lead to more precise treatment of their condition.
> And why do you assume that it won't be accompanied by negatives?
I explicitly don't assume this, I said that the benefits will outweigh the drawbacks.
> the sole agent of evil in this world is people.
This is a specious argument. By that same measure, the sole agent of good in the world is also people. But that's irrelevant. Tech can be used both to harm and to benefit, and I'm arguing that personal gene sequencing can and will be used to provide more benefit than harm.
Yes, you did reference both, and I lost track in my response.
I expect a few relatively wealthy people to get some benefit, for example when they have real health conditions that can be helped by genetic knowledge. I don't expect benefit for the rest. Across the population, some will have net benefit, some will have net drawback, and it would be very easy for the second group to be an order of magnitude larger than the first.
