Right to Consumer Genetics?

These days it seems we have a "right" to everything except the rights that are actually given to us by our Creator and enumerated in the Constitution. (My latest favorite is the "right to be unlimited." A right for iPhone5 users according to Sprint.) Chelsea Zimmerman over at Reflections of a Paralytic sent me this article from the MIT Technology Review over the Christmas holiday. It says we have a "right to consumer genetics."What exactly is consumer genetics? Well, you can go about getting your genes tested in a couple of ways. Your doctor can order a test for a genetic predisposition for a particular disease. You give a blood sample or a sample of cheek cells and a clinical genetics lab tests that for the mutation of interest. (That was my job.) Your doctor, or genetic counselor, gets the results and interprets them for you.Or you can, without your doc's involvement, spit in a cup and send your saliva to a for-profit company like 23andMe which will test your DNA for all kinds of things like ancestry (where they tell you what percentage of Neanderthal DNA you have) and health (where they tell you the percentage chance you will get Alzheimer's or diabetes etc.) And you can enter your spit into research projects for cancer or Parkinson's disease. With this kind of genetic testing though, you are left to try and interpret the results yourself.Continue reading at Creative Minority Report >>
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Genetic Testing Source Type: blogs