Если коротко - с генами всё устроено так хитро, что ими фиг сманипулируешь, а большая часть восторженных сообщений типа "открыт ген, отвечающий за (диабет, гомосексуализм, депрессию)" - полная брехня.
Take height. A good way of predicting how big a baby will grow is to measure its mother and father. Tall parents have tall children, and height is highly heritable. The molecular mappers have now used their tape measures on around 30,000 people. They find 50 or so different genes associated with being tall or short – but altogether, they account for only one part in 20 of the variation needed to explain the similarity of children and parents. Macavity has struck, and does so again and again.
To give another example, today's explosion of obesity means that tomorrow's greatest killer may be adult-onset diabetes. The genome scans reveal 18 different bits of chromosome that light up as culprits – but together they explain less than one part in 20 of the overall inherited liability to diabetes. At that rate, as many as 800 different genes may be behind this illness; which means that their individual value as predictors of risk is tiny.
In other words, our chances of being born with a predisposition to a common illness such as diabetes or heart disease are not represented by the roll of a single die, but a gamble involving huge numbers of cards. Some people are dealt a poor mix and suffer as a result. Rather than drawing one fatal error, they lose life's poker game in complicated and unpredictable ways. So many small cards can be shuffled that everyone fails in their own private fashion. Most individual genes say very little about the real risk of illness. As a result, the thousands of people who are paying for tests for susceptibility to particular diseases are wasting their money.
Кончится, я подозреваю, тем, что генетики признают: очень многое (не всё) зависит от образа жизни и, главное, образа мысли. Мы во многом (не во всем - речь не о врожденных заболеваниях, и тут на генетику есть надежда) те, кем мы себя делаем. Я понимаю, что человечество не готово к такому откровению, но.
(Чтобы не было недопонимания: я всеми руками и ногами за то, чтобы мы научились лечить всё, что можно. Но не всё так просто - увы.)
