My Thoughts on Genetic Testing
Lately I’ve been thinking about genetic testing and its proliferation recently, especially those available by mail. A lot of those advertising are paternity related but others cover a wide variety of diseases.
CBS News recently had a good article about this.
Home Genetic Tests For Disease - CBS News
One of the problems with these mail-in testing is that, in the vast majority of cases, there is no counseling involved. What about the situation where a woman has sent in a DNA testing for breast cancer and the results come back that she has the gene in question. What does this mean to her? Does that mean she will definitely develop breast cancer? All of these are sure to be though about and without any access to genetic counseling how are they to get answers. Hopefully, most would turn to their primary care physician but some studies indicate they aren’t informed on what these various genetic testing results mean.
Seems that in some cases, these are like the old snake oil salesmen. They claim to test for all sorts of things but don’t disclose the limitations. There is also the worry of counseling if the results are potentially devastating. THen there is the fact that this industry is largely unregulated.
I think this area will be one that sees a dramatic increase in use in the next few years but like any tool, it needs to be used correctly. I can’t say, based on what I know now, that I think the mail order genetic testing is worth the cost, both monetary and psychological. This is another case where science is far ahead of public policy.
Other Resources
Genetic testing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
DNAPolicy
Talk to Your Doctor or Healthcare Practitioner About Home Genetic Tests
Technorati Tags: genetic testing
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