Will Candidate's Genes Tip Future Presidential Races?

In a new paper in the New England Journal of Medicine, neurologist Robert Green and health law specialist George Annas, both of Boston University, explore the political implications of presidential candidates' genes as factors in future elections. They imagine a world in which candidates' DNA is plucked from a stray hair they leave behind, and a genome scan used to reveal their risk of all sorts of diseases. A scan of President-elect Barack Obama or Senator John McCain's DNA wouldn't have given us much useful information, the two admit, because even though we've found loads of genetic variants, the significance of many is still iffy, and they tell us relatively little about whether or not someone will actually develop, say, heart disease or a psychiatric condition.  Still, the pair urge candidates not to release their DNA—but all it will take is one drop of saliva on a diner coffee mug before that DNA and its code could be made public.