Aggregated News
Several new companies are betting consumers will be curious enough to shell out $1,000 or more to learn what diseases might lurk in their genes.
Using a half-teaspoon of saliva, collected at home and mailed to a lab, companies with catchy names such as de-CODEme and 23andME (for humans' 23 chromosomes) are selling the chance to peer into one's genome, the hereditary information encoded in DNA.
The Genetics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., has identified eight companies marketing a "personal genome service." They test for common gene variations linked to a higher risk of leading killers such as heart disease. Other firms market tests to detect genetic susceptibility to specific conditions; one for late-onset Alzheimer's is due this spring.
The tests raise a host of ethical and practical questions: Why should people be tested to see whether they're at risk for a disease they can't do anything about? What will they do with their results? What safeguards are in place to protect their privacy?
In The New England Journal of Medicine on Jan. 10, Harvard epidemiologist David Hunter...
Using a half-teaspoon of saliva, collected at home and mailed to a lab, companies with catchy names such as de-CODEme and 23andME (for humans' 23 chromosomes) are selling the chance to peer into one's genome, the hereditary information encoded in DNA.
The Genetics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., has identified eight companies marketing a "personal genome service." They test for common gene variations linked to a higher risk of leading killers such as heart disease. Other firms market tests to detect genetic susceptibility to specific conditions; one for late-onset Alzheimer's is due this spring.
The tests raise a host of ethical and practical questions: Why should people be tested to see whether they're at risk for a disease they can't do anything about? What will they do with their results? What safeguards are in place to protect their privacy?
In The New England Journal of Medicine on Jan. 10, Harvard epidemiologist David Hunter...