Employers are using genetic forecasts to predict your health
Your DNA acts as a biological weather forecast, allowing companies to calculate your lifetime risk for chronic illness based on thousands of tiny genetic variations.
Modern DNA analysis has moved beyond searching for a single 'broken' gene to calculating polygenic risk scores. These scores aggregate the tiny effects of thousands of genetic variants to predict your likelihood of developing conditions like heart disease or type 2 diabetes. While a traditional medical test identifies a disease you already have, these scores function like an actuarial forecast. In large biobanks, researchers have found that individuals in the top five percent of these genetic rankings can face a risk of illness three times higher than the average person, even if they appear perfectly healthy today.