...by knowing something about yourself that you're not ready to handle yet?
I surmise from observation that this is a common human sentiment, but I don't understand it. It affects more than just medical information. What aspect of human nature drives many of us to avoid the truth?
One cannot solve a problem of which one is unaware, whether it's climate change or a potentially harmful recessive gene.
It's not about avoiding the truth, it's about looking for the truth in a specified area but finding something that's not really a truth but appears as such. I think it's important to weigh the pros and cons of something like this. You're likely to gain information that would likely help you improve your quality of life and make informed decisions for possible next steps, but what happens when this information is available to others you don't want to see yet [1]?
It's not just solving a problem of which one is unaware, but it's the possibility of not being able to solve this problem or prevent its occurrence. [Climate change on the other hand is actionable.]
What about the fact that now there's a giant database that's probably not as anonymized as we'd like it to be, which has the potential to be accessed by many government/national/security agencies and hackers that can use the information against us?
With regard to the possibility of error, we (humans) just need to learn to set our expectations accordingly. If a given source of information has a small possibility of error, a possibility of negative results due to negative information, and the potential to avert the negative results by acquiring the information, we need to tell ourselves that we will not be affected by whatever negative information we gain. We need to assume for emotional purposes that it is likely erroneous, until verified by other means.
With regard to privacy concerns, I agree, and I hope that existing or future regulations like HIPAA protect this information enough that the knowledge gained outweighs the risk of privacy lost.
I surmise from observation that this is a common human sentiment, but I don't understand it. It affects more than just medical information. What aspect of human nature drives many of us to avoid the truth?
One cannot solve a problem of which one is unaware, whether it's climate change or a potentially harmful recessive gene.