This kind of thing may sound alarming: wherever you go, there seems to be a pair of eyes watching you. When you go to the barber store, the stylist will easily hide a few strands of your hair; after eating ramen in a restaurant, the owner will pick up the tissue you just wiped your mouth with a sneer; your colleagues in the office will inadvertently scratch your arm with a brand-new copy paper; then, these things are transferred to some guys in masks and white coats, and after some bottle and jar collisions and buzzing machines, a note will come out from the The printer spits out a note, the contents of which are kept secret from you, but known to everyone except you. Your girlfriend dumps you; your boss decides not to renew your contract; your insurance company won’t accept your policy; the airline refuses to sell you a ticket when you want to leave ……1 years later, you finish your life alone and in the pity of everyone. -You’re dead, and the cause of death is lung cancer. Is that absurd? People were already worried about these things when humanity was just moving into the genetic age. If in the future, any individual who is willing to pay enough money and provide a sample will be able to get a DNA test report and instructions from a genetic sequencing company. As mentioned at the beginning, samples with individual genetic information are too easy to obtain, ending in fearful “genetic discrimination” and “privacy disclosure”. In addition, the interest of individuals in their own genetic testing cannot be underestimated, as 70% of people are willing to undergo genetic testing to find out their risk of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a survey. It is possible to believe that as genetic research progresses and technology advances, significant changes may occur in human society as a result. But it still seems too early to say. Although there have been many advances in cancer and genes in recent years, it is still far from “a note to determine life and death”, not to mention that the occurrence of many cancers is not entirely determined by genes. At present, genomics is still in the primary and sporadic stage of helping cancer treatment. It is recognized that DNA copy number alteration, gene deletion, mutation, rearrangement and insertion are important causes of cancer development; the discovery of novel transcription factors has opened another door for understanding cancer; certain heritable variants can make certain special family groups susceptible to cancer; based on this, novel anti-cancer drugs are constantly born in the laboratory. Molecular markers and microarray analysis of mRNA expression profiles can now help us to distinguish between various cancer subtypes. In layman’s terms, two individuals with the same breast cancer, which looks similar histologically under the microscope, may be completely different cancer subtypes after genomic analysis, and different subtypes mean different treatments. With the gradual refinement of cancer subtyping, one day we will be able to individualize cancer treatment. Gone will be the days of “surgery, radiation and chemotherapy” once cancer is detected. Gene expression markers can also provide us with a reliable indicator of prognosis. Genomic profiling-based scoring systems that help doctors determine a patient’s risk of recurrence after treatment have been developed and are being tested in evidence-based medicine for breast, colon, and certain hematologic cancers. As a result, doctors will be better informed in their treatment choices, and patients will receive the most appropriate treatment options for them. Genomics can also help us find effective drugs to fight cancer and tell us which patients respond well to these drugs. By positive HER2 expression, we mean that these patients’ cancer cells express human epidermal growth factor receptor 2. Trastuzumab specifically blocks the binding of epidermal growth factor to its receptor 2, thereby blocking the growth of tumor cells. Trastuzumab is now the treatment of choice for HER2-expressing positive breast cancer. Along this line, many small molecule inhibitors have entered clinical trials for cancer treatment with some success. Inhibition of oncogene expression proteins is also one of the research directions: some oncogenes are able to encode specific proteins that in turn can initiate specific programs that eventually cause a vicious cycle and ultimately lead to changes in cellular properties and uncontrolled cell growth. By inhibiting these specific proteins, the vicious cycle of cancer development can be stopped. The success of Imatinib (Gleevec) in the treatment of chronic granulocytic leukemia is a prime example of this idea. After treatment, how can we determine if the cancer has recurred and to what extent? In the past, we mostly use some imaging methods, such as CT, ultrasound, MRI or PET to evaluate, but when the tumor recurrence is still in the nascent stage, these methods are powerless. Genetic research has given us a new tool. We can look for tumor tissue-specific markers in the blood, and more markers tend to indicate greater tumor load, which is particularly valid in hematologic tumors. These markers can be proteins encoded by tumor genes, or products secreted by tumor tissue, or even detect the copy number of mutated oncogenes. This will save us valuable time for early detection of tumor recurrence and early treatment. We now know about some inheritable genetic variants, and some of these variants are exciting, for example, some people are not susceptible to a certain subtype of AIDS and have been cured of a case of AIDS through bone marrow transplantation by accident. This has important implications in terms of disease prevention. In the future, cancer screening will be more targeted and those who carry specific risk genes will receive more attention. Now we are back to the situation at the beginning of this article: how is this personal information protected? Will people who carry specific genes be subject to genetic discrimination? How do we view the changes that genetic research has brought to society as a whole? While genetic research has undoubtedly opened up new horizons for cancer treatment, whether genetic testing is a blessing or a curse will require people’s wisdom to face it.