CSI Walgreen's Style
Starting tomorrow, Walgreen's will begin selling a kit that tests your genes. For a mere $30 you can mail a vial of saliva to a genetics testing firm and they claim to be able to determine risk factors for certain diseases, including the risk of spreading a disease to unborn children. The company also offers expensive, detailed reports about you genes as well.
Of course, since the report only deals with "risk factors" it is safe to say that the report only needs to be as accurate as your daily horoscope. It is not as if you can sue the company because you did not come down with cancer or some other disease you are genetically pre-disposed to get. This is supposed to help a person make better decisions so they can reduce some of those risks, so I imagine they may tell a person something a doctor may tell them like, "cut down on the fatty foods, quit smoking, exercise more and don't consume so much alcohol." That is if you are pre-disposed to certain diseases, maybe the test will come back and say, "Drink a lot of booze, smoke, sit on the couch and consume a lot of red meat and potato chips because your genes are fantastic!"
The company responsible for this breakthrough, Pathway Genomics, claimed in a press release in July of 2009 that they," can trace the path of a person's maternal and paternal ancestry back more than 150,000 years." I may not be a genetic scientist, but I am thinking that over the last 150,000 years somebody in my family has had every disease there is. Besides that, I don't even know the names of my relatives from 200 years ago or their ancestry so how could I prove they are not just making the whole thing up.
The other issue this raises is confidentiality. Do I really want some record of my health hanging around some office in California? For all I know somebody will leave their laptop at the airport one day with all my personal information on it and it will wind up in the hands of a marketing firm that will try and sell me snake oil to prevent the onset of Alzheimer's disease.
Moreover, what happens if people start basing big decisions on this testing, like whether or not to have children? The next thing you know, instead of a pre-nuptial agreement, women will ask men to spit in a vial to make sure they produce healthy babies. When asked about a breakup a woman might say, "he has a history of diabetes on his mother's side during the Paleolithic period, I just could not take a chance."
I realize that people are convinced by TV shows like CSI that genetic testing is infallible, but there have been plenty of cases where material has been contaminated or just plain mishandled. I'm thinking that sending a vial of spit in the mail even if it is labeled "handle with care" is not such a good idea. Plus, if this company is getting thousands of vials a day, they are not going to take a lot of time to care for the material. Nonetheless, I am sure they will handle one thing with extra special care, your money.
Of course, since the report only deals with "risk factors" it is safe to say that the report only needs to be as accurate as your daily horoscope. It is not as if you can sue the company because you did not come down with cancer or some other disease you are genetically pre-disposed to get. This is supposed to help a person make better decisions so they can reduce some of those risks, so I imagine they may tell a person something a doctor may tell them like, "cut down on the fatty foods, quit smoking, exercise more and don't consume so much alcohol." That is if you are pre-disposed to certain diseases, maybe the test will come back and say, "Drink a lot of booze, smoke, sit on the couch and consume a lot of red meat and potato chips because your genes are fantastic!"
The company responsible for this breakthrough, Pathway Genomics, claimed in a press release in July of 2009 that they," can trace the path of a person's maternal and paternal ancestry back more than 150,000 years." I may not be a genetic scientist, but I am thinking that over the last 150,000 years somebody in my family has had every disease there is. Besides that, I don't even know the names of my relatives from 200 years ago or their ancestry so how could I prove they are not just making the whole thing up.
The other issue this raises is confidentiality. Do I really want some record of my health hanging around some office in California? For all I know somebody will leave their laptop at the airport one day with all my personal information on it and it will wind up in the hands of a marketing firm that will try and sell me snake oil to prevent the onset of Alzheimer's disease.
Moreover, what happens if people start basing big decisions on this testing, like whether or not to have children? The next thing you know, instead of a pre-nuptial agreement, women will ask men to spit in a vial to make sure they produce healthy babies. When asked about a breakup a woman might say, "he has a history of diabetes on his mother's side during the Paleolithic period, I just could not take a chance."
I realize that people are convinced by TV shows like CSI that genetic testing is infallible, but there have been plenty of cases where material has been contaminated or just plain mishandled. I'm thinking that sending a vial of spit in the mail even if it is labeled "handle with care" is not such a good idea. Plus, if this company is getting thousands of vials a day, they are not going to take a lot of time to care for the material. Nonetheless, I am sure they will handle one thing with extra special care, your money.
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