Would You Want To Know??? (from todays Saratogian) ----------------------------------------- One day you’re walking down the street and see a fellow with his foot caught in a bear trap. Everyone else ignores his cries for help. But you venture over and help the poor chap out. Once he’s free he tells you he’s a magic genie and while he doesn’t grant three wishes like the other genies on the block he can give you a special gift. He can tell you how and when youre going to die. As silly as this scenario may sound we are inching closer to a time when doctors will be able to draw a tube of blood and predict, with startling accuracy, what’s going to kill you someday. Case in point the recent developments in predicting who will get Alzheimer’s disease. Just the other day the guys and gals in white coats announced they are very close to having a test that will predict Alzheimer’s with 90 percent accuracy. This is significant because once they know who will likely get it they can focus their testing on finding a cure. It’s all good stuff but, me being me, I have to wonder where this road is leading us. And is it a place all of us want to go? Pretend for a moment that you don’t need a magic genie but simply a trip to your primary care physician, who will draw blood and, a few days later, tell you what’s going to kill you and give you a ballpark figure of when this sad day will occur. Would you want to know? I think most of us would say, ‘Yes,’ as long we were going to die of something that the doctor’s had a shot at curing or at least delaying. But what if the tests showed you had a 97 percnt likelihood of developing a disease for which there was no cure? What if they could only give you a 10-year window of when this would occur, saying it will likely happen between your 50th and 60th birthdays. Would you still want to know? What if they said you are definitely going to get a type of cancer we can’t cure yet and we honestly don’t know when it will happen. Are you still anxious to know? Some of you are shaking your heads, ‘Yes,’ thinking that this information will change how you live. I mean why eat baloney sandwiches and save every penny for retirement if you might kick the bucket before you turn 50? Others may be saying, ‘No,’ because life is hard enough to deal with on a daily basis and you don’t need this sword of Damocles hanging over your head. Here’s what I think. If the day comes when a blood test can reveal what will kill me and when, I don’t want to know unless doctors can stop it from happening. Nothing would make me sadder than having a date circled in red on the calendar in my head knowing this is the day I die. And it shouldn’t take a death sentence to make you enjoy each day, forgive those who’ve crossed you or take a darn vacation. This should be standard fare in the diet of a happy life, anyway. Years ago I saw an interesting movie called, “Gattaca,” starring Jude Law and Ethan Hawke, which raised these very questions. Parents were told moments after a baby was born how strong the child would be, how smart, how long a life and ultimately what would bring death. That information didn’t enrich life; it put a price tag on it. I’m all for medical advancement and curing the things that ail you and I applaud the Alzheimer’s researchers for this breakthrough. If these genetic markers help them find a cure, it can’t come fast enough. I just want to raise the ethical question- when is it a case of knowing too much, especially if it involves a disease you can’t prevent or fix? In that case, I’d rather not know. Life should be spent living, not staring at the clock waiting for someone’s prediction to come true. Frankly, if a doctor told me I was going to drop dead on a specific day in 30 years, I’d probably be so preoccupied with my own demise I’d walk in front of a bus and spoil the plan. My tombstone would read — “Here lies John. We predicted a stroke but a bus gave him a poke. And that ain’t no joke.” John Gray is a news anchor on WXXA-Fox TV 23 and ABC’S WTEN News Channel 10. His column is published Wednesdays in The Record and Saratogian. Email JohnGray@news10.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 22:15:00 +0000
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