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In the past, geneticists have looked at so-called disease genes, but a lot of people have changes in their genes and don't get these diseases. There have to be other parts of physiology and genetics that compensate.

Genes work with probabilities; they don't work with certainties. So most things that you're looking at with these genetic tests, it's not like you're condemned to automatically get the disease or the syndrome. There's a lot of factors in play there.

First of all, many human diseases are influenced by, if not caused by mutations in genes.

My family and I were some of the first people to be genotyped.

Things look especially bleak for common killers such as diabetes and heart disease. Those ailments clearly have a genetic component. But when scientists survey genes looking for which mutations patients have in common, they come up empty.

The ever quickening advances of science made possible by the success of the Human Genome Project will also soon let us see the essences of mental disease. Only after we understand them at the genetic level can we rationally seek out appropriate therapies for such illnesses as schizophrenia and bipolar disease.

There are scientists all around the world looking for the genes responsible for bipolar illness and major depression.

Our family suffers from a hereditary condition called, generally, mental illness. Specifically, multiple family members in successive generations have suffered from either bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.

A person's health isn't generally a reflection of genes, but how their environment is influencing them. Genes are the direct cause of less than 1pc of diseases: 99pc is how we respond to the world.

My wife and I had been to the genetic counselor; my wife is not Jewish - she's the shiksha goddess type - and was negative for everything. But I was positive. I carried the gene for three genetic disorders, which, if she had been positive for, we would have passed down to the child.