Genetic testing and direct-to-consumer companies are becoming ever so popular. Genes give us probabilistic information, this information is not concrete. So why is it that genetic testing and genome reading is becoming so popular? Is it that we as humans find it necessary to have even a surreal feel of concrete information? Humans do not like things that they do not have knowledge about or cannot obtain knowledge to according to the article. Due to variation in environments and uniqueness of each person's genome multiple studies of a given trait or disease have produced varying results.Would you want to know if you were prone to certain disease, even if it was just a probability? I think that companies are going to make billions on scaring people, making them hypochondriacs, making them think they are at risk for a bunch of different traits or diseases, when it is actually a small probability to contract one. "Complex traits — such as the diseases that most of us will eventually
get — result from the interactions among multiple genes and/or environmental
factors. Predicting disease depends not just on identifying our
genotype, the particular, unique set of DNA sequence variants we
inherited, but also on predicting our future environments — what we’ll
eat, drink, or breathe, the medications we’ll take, and so on — which
neither DTC companies nor anyone else, no matter how ‘expert’, can do." so what do you think about all this? Do you think that these direct-to-consumer companies should be allowed to exploit people through their genes?
Tonya Sulham (3)
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I don't consider this exploiting patients. I think that the best way to live life is to be proactive. Using all the resources available to protect our bodies could be a good thing. Earlier knowledge can help people to live longer.
ReplyDeleteKimberly Ty (3)
I don't think that this is any more exploitative than current medicine already is. If somebody eats a lot of fatty foods then the doctor says you have a higher risk of heart disease. If you have a family history of heart disease then the doctor says that you have a higher risk of heart disease. If genetic testing says that you have genes associated with a high risk of heart disease then you're going to get the same response. It's a matter of knowing what you can change, what you can prepare for and what risk means. This is the responsibility of the patient.
ReplyDeleteAlso there are genetic diseases that only develop later in life that can be predicted by genome analysis and can only be treated if detected early.
Kaitlin Jones (3)
I find it strange that you think it is up to the patient to figure out what they can change, and what they can prepare for. Isn't this up to the doctor to inform the patient? Some people may be incapable of finding valid information for themselves they rely on their doctors to do this for them.
ReplyDeleteTonya Sulham (3)