Weekly Blogpost #13

Wednesday, November 5th, 2013

A Possibly Impending Doom

How would you react if you knew you were going to be diagnosed with a terminal disease? If given the chance, would you take a genetic test that would determine whether you will acquire the illness or not, despite ignorance of the results?

You may have already heard about the case of the two sisters and the mother who was victim of an extremely rare sleep deficit disorder (the disease eventually leads to death because the inability to sleep deteriorates the health of the victim). After analyzing the symptoms and causes of the disorders at the genetic level, doctors offered each of the sisters the "opportunity" to take a diagnostic test, consisting of genetic mapping, in order to check whether they would acquire the disease or not eventually. (This disorder was inevitable if the individual had the genes coding for the sleeping defect.) One of the sisters agreed to take the test (and luckily it turned out she did not have the genes coding for the disorder!), and the other one declined and preferred to let life takes its course.

Your question asking whether we would take a pill to acquire all the knowledge needed to pass our exams reminded me of this case. The thing is, we often associate the acquisition of knowledge with positives, such as intelligence or happiness. In your scenario, taking the pill would allow me to have an easy way to pass the test, like a free pass. In the scenario I presented just now, undergoing the genetic mapping could bring as much happiness and relief as grief and fear. Undergoing the diagnostic test would be like gambling, literally a life and death situation. The decision relies on the victor in the individual's internal struggle. Because the truth is, this does cause a heated internal conflict between the curiosity driving for knowledge and the "voice of reason" or "emotion of fear", or however you want to call it, that shies away. The individual wonders and weighs where happiness lies, which alternative will not cause pain.
"Do I want to know? Do I want to risk having the deception of knowing I may die next year? But what if I do not have the disease? Wouldn't my ignorance of this great piece of information save me from many nights of torment and uncertainty? But what if I do have the genes coding for the disease? Would I be able to happy? Even if I promise myself that, whatever the results, I will live my life to the fullest, and strive to be even happier and lead a better life, would the knowledge of my death maybe crush these promises? Wouldn't my knowledge simply ruin my life, my chances of happiness?"
I am not actually going to reveal my answer to the question I posed at the beginning of this post. I simply wanted to raise this question and present this scenario, because it always initiates a lot of interesting and deep reflections.