Several years ago, yes several, some friends and I were sitting around after watching Back to the Future, for the umpteenth time. It's one of my favorite movies, only falling a few slots behind The Outlaw Josey Wales.
We talked about having a time machine and whether you had one choice – go backwards and return or for forward and return. It turned into a strange conversation.
If you went forward and found out some terrible things could you come back and make corrections to prevent those terrible things from happening? If you went backwards and could come back what would you do? Most of us liked the idea of going backwards and we really wanted that sports book Biff had or a peek at stock market and the price of gasoline, oil and other commodities. We'd all be rich.
It's hard to believe that movie hit the screen in 1985, it seems like only yesterday.
But there was a catch to the DeLorean time machine that Doc Brown told Marty McFly – you couldn't alter the future by what you learned in the past or there would catastrophic consequences. He didn't follow his own advice and put on a bullet-proof vest when Marty returned from 1955 in an attempt to warn him he was about to get shot.
The consensus of our discussion was if you couldn't bring back any knowledge you learned by going back in time, it would be neat but not that big of a deal. My bet is most of us can pick a point in time we'd like to go back to change things if we could.
So, what about going to the future or having a crystal ball? Same questions arose. If you looked into the crystal ball and found out that you were going to be run over by a truck on a certain day and time and you had no way to bring that information back to prevent it from happening, would you really want to know?
I read with interest a few articles the past week about Iceland trying to gather DNA samples from as many of its 330,000 residents in hopes of using that information to tell people whether or not they are likely to get cancer based on certain genes.
The articles I read said Iceland is the perfect place to start this process since the overwhelming number of its citizens came from the same lineage.
The articles said tens of thousands of Iceland residents have donated DNA samples, but the government is now concerned over privacy issues. It seems a doctor has isolated a certain gene that causes breast cancer in women and prostate cancer in men. One article said 'untreatable' prostate cancer.
The articles said we have scientists in the United States trying to do the same thing but with our diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds it's a shot in the dark at best.
Many balk in the U.S. over stem cell research claiming scientists are trying to play God and are scared we'll one day clone a human being.
I've had prostate cancer. I would have loved to have known earlier that I had the gene that causes the disease. My bet is most women who are hit with the awful news they have breast cancer and could have possibly prevented it would do so. What about a child who gets diagnosed with cancer? Could a heads up from a DNA sample possibly have kept that from happening?
Don't we already have a little bit of crystal ball in our medical system? You give blood, they look and they tell you you have a problem that needs addressing. I learned a lot about cancer when I was diagnosed and the most important thing I learned is that if you catch it early, you can survive. If not you die. It's that plain and simple.
I don't want a crystal ball to tell me when I'm going to die. But I like the crystal-ball aspect of the research they are doing in Iceland.
Doctors and researchers aren't playing God, they are using the tools God gave them to help us.
Some crystal balls I don't want to look into. Ask yourself which crystal ball you would like to take a peek into.
