Changing Your Destiny With George Church

In Newsweek, George Church writes that the message that people get from knowing their genomes "is not 'Here's your destiny. Get used to it!' Instead, it's 'Here's your destiny, and you can do something about it!'" Though pharmacogenomics is in its early days, Church points out that it is already being used to help patients. Furthermore, he adds that cheaper genomics will not only change the course of biological research, but also bestow benefits upon the public as a whole. "When the personal genomes and medical histories from much larger numbers of people become available, we expect much greater progress in identifying rare genetic variations that cause common diseases like cancer and heart disease," he writes.