With research based on Iceland’s age-old genealogies and health database, deCODE Genetics claims the ability to decipher the secret language of your DNA. But before you heed your prescient cells, does science know what they’re trying to tell you?

Published in the 2008 summer issue of Iceland Review – IR 46.02. By Jonas Moody, photos by Páll Stefánsson.

I was alone when I found out I would probably lose my hair. Early one morning at the Iceland Review offices in Reykjavík with coffee and the paper, I logged onto my deCODEme online account. My genomic profile had come back a couple of weeks ago, but I had gotten notification that a new trait had been added to the list: male pattern baldness. Slightly apprehensive but curious nonetheless, I made the fateful click.

I was answered with a large green check mark. Yes. I have the nasty harbinger of the receding hairline, the thinning crown, the desperate comb over: genetic variant rs2223841 in the androgen receptor gene on my X chromosome. Meaning? I have a twenty percent increased chance of going bald before the age of 40 and am unlikely to retain hair after age 60. Or at least, so say the DNA code breakers at Iceland’s deCODE Genetics. This I am told along with a host of other statistical prognostications about my body, my health and my eventual demise, including the heavy hitters like heart attack, Alzheimer’s, prostate, breast and lung cancer, diabetes types I and II, and multiple sclerosis.

For thousands of years man has been trying to figure out a way to read his fate. Ancient Roman augurs studied the f light patterns of birds to interpret the will of the gods. Victorian phrenologists palpated the head for lumps to deduce an individual’s potential. Even the early Icelanders poked around the entrails of sheep for a glimpse at their fortunes. And a thousand years later we are still at it. Now we peer into the nucleus of human cells to untwist the ladder spelling out our genetic destiny.

You can read the remainder of this article in the 2008 summer issue of Iceland Review – IR 46.02.

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