George Church encourages those who can afford genome sequencing to get their genomes done, reports the Boston Globe's Inside the Hive Blog.
Church was hosting some 150 people who had paid about $150 each as part of event put on by Xconomy called Healthcare Gets Personal, and when he asked his audience whether any of them had had their genomes sequence, no one raised their hand, Callum Borchers reports.
"I consider this one of the greatest paradoxes of our time," Church said.
He argued that genome sequencing, though it has yet not realized its promise, can inform people about their risk for a number of diseases, including Tay-Sachs disease and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. And if there is information that people don't want to know, they can ask for it to be withheld from them.
"I wouldn't wait," he said. "I didn't wait. I was the fifth person on the planet to get sequenced."