If the baseline is a 30% chance of dying of heart disease and it told you that you had a 70% chance, what would you do differently? (but it won't.) Probably you should already be doing it because 30% is a big number!
That line of argument is flawed because actions have costs.
To give a simple example (and discussing whether it's precisely correct is besides the point), you can take baby aspirin to reduce the risk of heart attacks. Aspirin is a blood thinner, it makes clots (which cause heart attacks) less likely. However decreasing coagulation is not an unmitigated blessing. If you get internal bleeding -- e.g. a blood vessel ruptured in your brain -- that aspirin you've been taking could make things significantly worse. It's a trade-off.
Given this, you want to know on which side (basically, heart attacks vs. strokes) is your personal risk the highest. It is actionable knowledge.
an 80% chance of breast cancer, which is really not that different from a 20% chance
Looks very different to me -- you are quite cavalier with a fourfold difference in odds...
4 is a small number. It is pretty rare that a cost-benefit calculation cares about that factor of 4, that multiplying the benefits by 4 will change the decision from reject to accept.
Hi, I was considering possibility of undergoing some kind of genetic testing for a while now. But I hesitated because I have a quite limited financial resources available right now. Eventually I've figured that in the future I'd do it anyway, so why don't just do it right away. Especially taking into account that knowing some data available via such tests in an earlier stage of life and acting on it could be quite beneficial in a long run.
So after that realization I've thought about going with 23andme and performing SNP genotyping. But in the process of browsing related information I've encountered article about rapid decreasing in price for Whole genome sequencing. After that I've found this listing: https://www.scienceexchange.com/services/whole-genome-seq?page=2 and the lowest price tag there is $795 (but it's not clear whether that particular option is applicable to human genomes).
And as a result the whole WGS thing seems quite appealing, but I have some concerns here. I still have quite limited finance and WGS seems to have at least 10x prize in relation to SNP. And the other concern is data applicability (more on this one further).
Information about what and how you can do with WGS data is somewhat scarce on the Internet. So I have some questions here:
I know that for SNP tests there are tools like Promethease (http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Promethease) that allow you to analyze your data. But I was not able to find anything about tools for analyzing your WGS data.
So are there any good tools available for you to analyze your WGS data? And: Is it computationally feasible to get results in an adequate time, using a general pc for this purposes?
And finally with all above said: should I go for whole genome sequencing/SNP/or my whole line of reasoning is invalid and I should wait for now and get WGS in a few years for a smaller price?
(My main concern here is positive influence on health in a long run.)
Thanks.