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What if laboratories could run comprehensive DNA tests on infants at birth, spotting important variations in their genomes that might indicate future medical problems? Should parents be told of each variation, even if any risk is still unclear? Would they even want to know?
New parents needn’t confront these difficult questions just yet. The more than four million babies born in 2014 in the United States will likely be screened in traditional ways — by public health programs that check for sickle cell anemia and several dozen other serious, treatable conditions. So far, DNA-based tests of infants play only a small part in screening.
But that may change in the next few years, as technology that can sequence and analyze the entire genome of a child becomes available, potentially detecting a range of inherited genetic conditions at birth. It’s the same type of analysis that now can tell adults — if they choose to ask for it — whether they are at high risk for a certain type of cancer, for example. As the technology becomes more sophisticated, it will...
New parents needn’t confront these difficult questions just yet. The more than four million babies born in 2014 in the United States will likely be screened in traditional ways — by public health programs that check for sickle cell anemia and several dozen other serious, treatable conditions. So far, DNA-based tests of infants play only a small part in screening.
But that may change in the next few years, as technology that can sequence and analyze the entire genome of a child becomes available, potentially detecting a range of inherited genetic conditions at birth. It’s the same type of analysis that now can tell adults — if they choose to ask for it — whether they are at high risk for a certain type of cancer, for example. As the technology becomes more sophisticated, it will...