We ’ll soon know more about our bodies than ever before – but are we ready? | Daniel M Davis

Tests could show the probability of illnesses occurring in five, 10 or 20 years, with huge moral and ethical implicationsWe ’re soon going to have to make our own choices about social distancing, wearing masks and travel. When the legal enforcement of rules is lifted, the way in which each of us deals with the risk of Covid-19 will be down to personal judgment. But how well equipped are we to make these decisions?Graphs and data can help explain things, but what ’s also needed is a deep understanding of how science works, and, perhaps most important of all, a sense of how to weigh up the odds of coming down with the disease and how it might affect us. Not in an abstract way, but in our day-to-day lives. And what many people don’t realise is that Covid-1 9 is just the start.Very soon, we will be exposed to all kinds of complicated information about the state of our health, including our personal level of risk for any number of illnesses. More and more, we will have to make decisions, based on new science, about almost every aspect of our lives.This is because progress in human biology is accelerating at an unprecedented rate, and there ’s no sign of it slowing down. On the horizon are entirely new ways of defining, screening and manipulating health, completely new insights about diet, and any number of ideas for how babies can be born. Things are not moving along incrementally. Rather, we are on the brink of a revolution.We ’re used to thinking about cancer, for inst...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Medical research Science Biology Psychology Cancer research Health Health policy Society UK news Source Type: news