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Genetic Testing Coming To a Drugstore Near You
Hugh Pickens writes "The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Walgreens is slated to begin selling genetic-testing kits priced from $20 to $30 apiece that can tell people whether they're likely to get breast cancer, Alzheimer's disease, become obese, or suffer from a range of other maladies. However, to get the results of various tests, shoppers will have to fork over an additional $79 for drug-response results, $179 for 'pre-pregnancy planning' results, $179 for health condition results, or $249 for a combination of the three. Pathway Genomics and other companies already offer such tests online, but Walgreens will be the first brick-and-mortar retailer to sell them. FDA spokeswoman Karen Riley says Pathway overstepped its bounds when it announced its plans to market the tests directly to the consumer at 6,000 of Walgreen's 7,500 stores and wants Pathway Genomics to submit data showing that its tests give accurate results. 'The claims have limitations based on existing science,' says Riley, 'and consumers should not be making important medical and lifestyle decisions based on these tests without first consulting a health-care professional.' Walgreen responded that FDA clearance is not required to sell the kit in its stores; and anyway, the drugstore chain already sells other diagnostic and testing products such as pregnancy tests, paternity tests, and drug tests."
5. Services Limitations. The Services provided by Pathway Genomics are solely for research and educational purposes and uses. Although based on scientific research, the Services, including all information about genetic findings and probabilities, have not been fully validated and shall not be relied upon by you or any other person to diagnose, treat or prevent any disease or health condition. You should consult with a physician or other appropriate health care professional regarding the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of any disease or health condition.
Emphasis mine. I knew that'd be in there along with point 13 (the indemnity clause). On the plus side they've got this:
9. Proprietary Rights. You own all Genetic Information derived from your saliva or other biological material. Genetic Information means the As, Ts, Cs, and Gs at particular locations in your genome.
If you submit or post content on the Pathway Genomics website or otherwise using the Services, (a) you retain any copyright rights that you hold in this content, and (b) you grant Pathway Genomics a nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide license to copy, modify, translate, publicly display and distribute this content. This license grants Pathway Genomics the right to use this content to provide the Services and to provide this content to other companies and individuals affiliated with Pathway Genomics. You warrant to Pathway Genomics that you have the right, power and authority to grant this license.
Of course we all would think that would go without saying but you never know these days and in bullet 12 they follow that up with you have permission to send them this sample. I shudder to think that someone might grab some of their significant other's saliva in order to see what their genetic tests reveal and call the whole thing off based on the fact that their offspring would have a 5% higher chance of getting breast cancer according to The Super Deluxe Cancer Finder 3000.
My work here is dung.
next theyl be hiring surgeons and charging "sale" prices for operations..
“The claims have limitations based on existing science, and consumers should not be making important medical and lifestyle decisions based on these tests without first consulting a health-care professional,” Riley said.
So why don't I just ask the gypsy fortune teller instead. She probably has more experience experience.
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
" and consumers should not be making important medical and lifestyle decisions based on these tests without first consulting a health-care professional. " Really? Don't they know their target demographic? I don't know about you guys, but I can already see a battalion of trashy people walking out of Walgreen's with a genetic testing kit in tow. You know, the kind of people who are going to rage when they find out they have to pay for the results and then base life decisions on it, because hey, "I already sunk a hunred' dollahs in tha damn thang!"
Raters gon' rate.
Now just look at the number of people on /. who have done a 180 and are now thumbing their noses at statitics and the roled they play in science and medicine.
Better yet is the number here who are claiming that they may as well be praying to the flying speghetti monster as it's just as effective.
Stinking hypocrits.
"and consumers should not be making important medical and lifestyle decisions based on these tests without first consulting a health-care professional" People make major life decisions based on nonsense everyday. Last I checked, every major newspaper in the country prints horoscopes, etc. Also, mentioned in the article, Walgreen's has been selling pregnancy and drug tests forever. Every day people make major decisions based on these diagnostic tests. What is it specifically about genomics that is getting everyone all tight in the panties?
If they were going to wait for FDA approval before selling these things they'd have to wait... a year? 5 years? 10 years? And how much money would they have to sink into validation testing? I can't blame them for slapping a disclaimer on the thing and selling it as is.
mmmm...forbidden donut
This is just a diagnostics test. It won't kill anyone. The FDA should let the market sort this things out and not get in the way of progress.
They do enough damage already by setting up a huge entry barrier for startups and new drugs. This only benefits the big Pharmaceutical companies, and I think that is probably the point...
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
Were are Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman when you need them?
The question, of course, is to what degree lifestyle is influenced by genetic factors...
Unless we are going to cling to the (intuitively satisfying; but rather silly) theory that humans have some sort of extra-material "free will" floating around in the aether, we pretty much have to concede that behavior has a biological basis. And, if something has a biological basis, the odds of it having a genetic and/or epigenetic component are pretty decent.
Not to shamelessly plug the website, but it's out there.
It could, and probably will, be worse. I can see this kind of thing used by companies when they're supposedly testing for drugs, and it'll just so happen that down the line there'll be some "restructuring" in which everyone who is slightly more probable to need sick days down the line is silently let go. And God have mercy on you if someone does a statistic to the effect of "people with gene XYZ show a 2% higher chance of depression / drug use / paedophilia / having problems with authority / whatever."
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
More dangerous would be something like you sending off a workmate's saliva to see if they have HIV and then using that information to force them out of a job, etc. That's the sort of casual mis-use that we *don't* need.
Why would you use a genetics test to test for HIV? While you can now test for HIV with saliva, Pathway Genomics does not check for HIV as it's not a genetically inherited disease. It can be passed from mother to offspring prior to or during birth but it's not inherit to the genetic material. These tests at Walgreens are not to check for HIV or AIDS.
if you are with someone "significant" who calls the whole thing off because of things like that, then you're much, much better off without them, surely?
Depends, relationships are all about compromise. You meet the perfect someone but they're a hypochondriac when it comes to cancer. Oh well, you can work past that until they get their hands on this test and demand you take it or, like I said, send in your sample without your consent. No one's perfect. Someone worrying now about their offspring's future is not a bad thing. The bad thing is proceeding without consent. Your fears, however, make absolutely no sense.
Someone with a genetically inherited disease working next to you does not pose a risk unless you plan on them becoming your father or mother.
My work here is dung.
So many things wrong with this, let's count...
1) False positives causing worry and unnecessary preventive maintenance.
2) False negatives causing folks to overlook healthy practices that they might have otherwise prescribed to.
3) A combination of both. Cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria...
Unless we are going to cling to the (intuitively satisfying; but rather silly) theory that humans have some sort of extra-material "free will" floating around in the aether, we pretty much have to concede that behavior has a biological basis. And, if something has a biological basis, the odds of it having a genetic and/or epigenetic component are pretty decent.
When push comes to shove, we have a consciousness that allows us to take a step back, look at what we're doing and make rational decisions based on a number of factors. As much as the behavior that nature and/or nature may be ingrained in us, we have the capacity to override it.
I'd humbly suggest that all those who feel they do not have this ability take up their rightful places in the animal kingdom and revoke their human rights immediately.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
I read this title as:
Generic Drug testing coming to a store near you.
and somehow was intrigued
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
The idea of a rational basis for behaviour has been pretty effectively demolished by now, particularly by the fact that our brains are not computationally powerful enough to calculate perfect rational choices in all but the simplest possible situations. Rationality is mostly a post-hoc invention. i.e. you only think you're a rational being.
Anyway, the capacity to override biologically-determined behaviour also has a biological basis, so also has a genetic and/or epigenetic component.
You humans, always oversimplifying things!
You are exactly the type of person the OP was talking about. The "science is the new god" type.
You honestly cannot accept an argument that human beings are more than the sum of their biological parts.
You can think that (many people do), but it is foolish to ignore the possibility that there is more out there. Real philosophy somewhere got replaced by a straw man, one so good that our society as a whole believed it. While the new god reigns, art, literature and culture die-- sacrificed before the almighty empiricism that provides data on everything while answering nothing.
I pity people who are stuck in a world where you can easily answer questions of "how" things work but don't even realize that the question of "why" things work is not the same thing.
What's interesting about this is that one can use a take-home test to genetically test someone else without their consent.
Just wait a couple more years, and get a full genome sequence for the same price. We've already got SNPchips that can do almost 2 million genetic tests for about $500. Admittedly, that's for high-volume (96 individuals at least) research-based analysis, but I'm sure it will enter the general public arena in due time.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Scientists don't know yet which genes in which combinations cause Alzheimers or heart disease or cancer. (Trust me. This type of thing was my job.) All scientists know at this point is a few genes which are associated with chronic diseases.
You'd have a better chance of a true prediction of your fate using astrology. We don't know enough to make a yes/no test for those diseases. We do know enough to make a yes/no test for pregnancy or drugs. (Actually, not always on the latter. Don't eat any poppy seed buns the day before.)
The difference between a drugstore test and a doctor's is that there is some chance the doctor will be aware of the complexity, of what the testing cannot do, and of how much it really means for your future.
The drugstore test is just a way to take your money.
Wow, your reference to global warming really came out of nowhere. I've never heard anybody blame it for disease or bad choices.
The assertion that people cause their own diseases is an overgeneralization. Birth defects and chilhood cancer are obvious examples. Many cancers are strongly linked to genetics, e.g. there's a mutation that causes almost certain (near 100% risk) colon cancer.
Many more diseases, e.g. skin cancer, are the product of both genetic predisposition, circumstances, and behaviors. An obvious example of disease due to circumstance is the common cold, or the flu; do you honestly believe you could go a lifetime never contracting those diseases just by being responsible?
Thank you FDA for protecting us from ourselves. God help us if the proletariat are allowed to decide for themselves if they want to use this kit by evaluating it's merits on their own.
At least, if it is Walgreens — or nearly any other company, that does not actively fight unionization of workforce — we can have a (semi-)intelligent discussion...
But if it were Walmart doing this...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Nowhere in TFA does it explain what you get for the $20-$30 that will be forked over to Walgreens.. Does that just buy you a tube and an envelope?
there is a way that is cheaper and more effective.
Family history.
With the exception of (not-nonexistent; but quite rare) conditions caused by a mutation or mutations that originated with you, not earlier in the line, or a fairly small number of well developed genetic tests, most of which you aren't going to get over the counter at CVS, you'll have a better chance of learning about the likely phenotypic consequences of your genes by looking at mommy and daddy
You are correct.
I just went through a stack of articles on this so let me see if I got it right.
There are two kinds of genetic diseases.
First there are the extremely rare diseases which are caused by a single mutation, like Gaucher disease. If it was in your family, you'd almost certainly know it, or you'd at least know that you have a problem in your family, because you would have had relatives who had it. Like most of the rare diseases on that list http://www.pathway.com/more_info/full_list_of_conditions (all of which you can look up in Wikipedia) it's a pretty dramatic disease.
One of them in the news lately was Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, which is worth looking up http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/health/research/11gene.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcot-Marie-Tooth_disease just because it's so interesting.
Second there are the more common diseases like breast cancer, colorectal cancer, coronary artery disease, diabetes, etc., which most of us will die from.
There are a few single-gene mutations that will usually result in cancer, like the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene for breast cancer, which occur in about 1 or 2% of the population.
But most of the other genes that are associated with those diseases only confer an additional 1% (or less) risk of the disease. That's the big frustration in genetic medicine. The doctor tells you, "You've got a genetic variation that, other things being equal, gives you a 1% increased risk of getting diabetes." How is that information going to change your life in any way?
Scientists think they're doing pretty well if they discover a gene that increases the risk of a common disease by 10%. Now 10% is the *relative* risk. If 5% of the population gets a particular disease, that gene will increase the risk to 5.5%, which is not much greater. So you've found out that you have an increase in the *absolute* risk of 0.5% from that one gene. (But you don't know anything about the dozens of genes affecting that disease that they haven't discovered yet.)
One of the problems with BRCA1 and BRCA2 is that those genes were patented by Myriad Genetics, which was charging $3,000 or more to test for that one gene. Many of the most important genes were patented, and one of the disadvantages of that was that it made it impossible to put together a cheap screen of all the common disease-associated mutations. Myriad just lost a patent lawsuit, and if that decision is upheld, we will be able to get genetic screens with every important known mutation. http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/brca-genes-and-patents But I can't tell from Pathway's web site whether they include BRCA1 and BRCA2 screening in their test.
Another problem is that mutations are caused by a defect in DNA. There are lots of defects. The Pathway test may be testing for one breast cancer mutation, while you have a different mutation somewhere else along the DNA strand that gives a protein with a different but equally damaging defect.
Now that I look at it again, I see that they don't include Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease in their genetic screen. http://www.pathway.com/more_info/full_list_of_conditions (Maybe that's
The 3rd person sequenced James Watson had 20-some deleterious genes, including one for macular degeneration blindness. None had manifested so far. Ditto for Prof Steven Pinker who was about the tenth person sequenced. He carried a gene for baldness. He had a full head of hair at age 55 the last time I saw him.
I think it would matter more if you had a known manifestation in an immediate ancestor and were shown to be carrying that too.
just one more useless thing marketed to hypochondriacs and obsessive compulsives.
lose != loose
Once you accept that she too is a human being, has a family, etc, and isn't there just as some accessory to your wellbeing -- a notion that sadly some nerds seem to have trouble understanding -- then, yes, it makes sense to worry about her work conditions too. Negotiate first. And I'm sure that if it happened once that you need her to stay some more, and it really is 10 minutes, you can agree to some compromise. If you need her to do several hours of overtime every day, now that's where I damn hope that the union has something to say.
Besides, I'm in a country where unions are everywhere (Germany) and contrary to the libertarian BS I hear from over the ocean, it didn't result in either bankruptcy or slavery yet. It also turns out that the unions aren't this evil thing hell-bent on causing disruption and preventing work getting done. Most of those people still want to work, it turns out. They don't want to be shafted, but that's a whole different issue.
More to the point, I'm not aware of any major union over here which flat out prohibits overtime and demans you exit the door on the exact minute. They might however ask for overtime pay. Especially if it happens regularly, and we're talking a lot more than 10 minutes.
But, again, once you realize that that nanny is a human being too, it might not be that hard to accept.
First of all, it's a non-sequitur, since I was talking about genetic testing. If you need genetic testing to realize that your barber is black, you have bigger problems :p
Second, even as one of those "but the employer has to discriminate because the customers might" excuses, it's a dumb one in this case. If you need a genetic test to determine something about an employee, then rest assured that the customers don't know that. If there was some big "I'm at risk of alzheimer's" sign on the guy's forehead to supposedly warn the customers off, you wouldn't need genetic testing to determine that in the first place.
Third, I'm not aware of anyone anywhere who was actually sued for switching a pizza shop or barber. Care to point out any actual cases? Or is it one of those BS over-the-top slippery-slope scenarios that some people seem to need to make their case for why shafting others should be ok?
Fourth, if you'd actually switch a shop because that barber has cancer (it's not contagious, you know?) or because genetic testing has found he's at slightly higher risk of Alzheimer's (ditto, you're not bacteria, you can't just absorb his deffective genes), then you're simply put a complete idiot. Genetic diseases are always non-contagious. It doesn't care if that guy shaved your beard, or handled the dough in your pizza, or even is your lover, you can't become infected with his genes or anything. We may not send the anti-discrimination authorities after you, but don't expect much support or respect there.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It's bad enough, the realization that I am mortal, that I'm inevitably going to die. Historically, most succumb to this reality and hope they die with dignity, honor or respect and admiration but technically most have always hoped they simply die in their sleep at an old age. No one wants to think about being horribly maimed in a car accident only to die slow and painfully. No one wants to think about dieing of Alzheimer's, or leprosy or any horrible condition perhaps lung cancer. The truth is, dieing in your sleep at a ripe old age is like winning the lottery, few do. So after accepting this reality, one begs the question; do you really want to know how you will go? I think it's best ignorance addresses and governs this question; careless pursuit of such truths could only do more harm than good. Genetic predisposition is becoming well understood, more so the actual understanding of the genetic code (so then it won't be a predisposition but a geneticist can say for a fact "if you live long enough, you will develop cancer, in fact by looking at your code, you have around 9,934,485,343 more permutations before this code activates). To add insult to injury, the man will charge you for this information. This isn't far fetched, the more we understand genetics it may come to light that it's nothing more than an algorithm just like every other machine or functioning system. Some things can catalyze progression of a trait such as smoking might speed up lung cancer but in the end, we all have a death gene somewhere that regardless if we smoke or swallow radioactive materials should we live long enough the same cancer will activate.
I don't want to know myself. I'd rather the doctor tell me upon diagnosis that way I lived my life rich in hope and expectation with the show only getting serious near the end; as expected anyways.
Good uses for this technology would be for... say, part of Special Forces training... testing for congenital heart problems... you don't want a SEAL going into sudden cardiac arrest during a mission ten or so years later. Or a large crane operator to just go into a massive epileptic seizure with several tons on the line 80 stories up.
I think this is good technology. But there should be some heavy arguments about divulging this information in fine detail to just anyone. Perhaps a doctor might know I am prone to have prostate cancer, he can consider that when prescribing medicine or undergoing medical procedures... but I don't want to know that 20 years in advance. I want to live my life free of this dire burden of knowledge. It will be a heavy burden believe me, ever see how people in California go into a fit because someone is smoking, as if it's some life threatening issue... like say, maybe walking around with milk jug full of sarin gas... how ridiculous people get over their "beliefs". Now, tell them something like what's written in stone for them... jesus christ will the shit hit the fan.
I can see it now, "I'm going to sue MTV because they are promoting a beach life style putting social pressures on me, my genetic doctor at Wal-Mart told me I have a rare gene for a type of skin cancer that'll make me die looking like Freddy Kruger and I want my equal rights... even though... genetically, I'm not equal... um... yeah I'll let the lawyer deal with that problem...." Poor McDonalds... they already got sued for having hot coffee... what are they going to do against someone destined for diabetes or maybe if they have the "fat bastard" gene that makes them weigh over 300lbs?
Yes, I agree totally. Having these results floating around uninterpreted by someone who really knows the science is just a recipe for silliness, but also some real harm could come if people jump to conclusions.
At one point, our obstetrician ordered up a "routine genetic screening" while my kid was in utero. I guess he was looking for Downs or something where the markers are well-known. What came back was a report of a marker - a "backwards" chromosome, and a cryptic one-liner about possible dire stuff and a reference to an academic paper on which the marker identification was based. Our obstetrician, a very experienced guy, couldn't tell us anything about what dire stuff we might be facing, or what the probability was, or what it all meant. He noted that according to the paper, if one of the parents had the same marker and was fine, then the probability was very high that the marker was benign. We also contacted the geneticist who performed the test for more information and counseling, and she had no further information about the meaning of the results. So we tested both of us parents (not cheap!) and mine came back with the same marker. Big sigh of relief -- no, no particular reason to consider aborting the fetus.
In the interim, we tracked down the researcher who wrote the original paper. Google and email are wonderful things. The researcher turned out to be a nice post-doc at Columbia Presbyterian. She couldn't tell us what dire consequences we might be facing or their probabilities, either. I don't think she'd ever been anywhere near a clinical situation. She had only published a paper noting the correlation and indicating that this might be a fruitful area for further research. She was quite surprised that a commercial genetic testing company was using her results as the basis for a test used for routine genetic screening.
This is very young science, folks. This is just one tiny example, and there are a lot of genes! It's going to take decades to sort through all the data we already have to figure out what it means. Doing this over the counter now is really jumping the gun.
I've always thought about: Walk-in MRI clinics. Show up with say, $100 and we'll throw you in a machine and give you a DVD of the ONLY copies of the images - after you sign a waver absolving us of all responsibilities about what the images mean, leaving the analysis to you and your doctor(s).
/sarcasm
Of course I suspect all doctors would refuse to even look at the images, let alone analyise them, as they didn't get their beak wet from the clinic profits or insurance overcharges. Plus the AMA would probably muscle all the Federal and state regulators to shut down the idea before it got started. All in the interest of the patient, of course.
Wow. Gattaca is now. Did nobody else see this movie?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/plotsummary
I'm not aware of any place which rounds upwards to the nearest hour, much less it being a uniform thing for unions generally. So I take it it's another of those BS extra assumptions needed to make the case for why unions are bad. Got any more around?
At any rate, I think it was libertarians who were into everything being solved by contract not by regulation. Surely you can inquire first hand if that fee is rounded up to integer hours or not, before hiring her.
But most importantly basically, she has to do unpaid overtime? If you demand extra work from her, she has to make the loss, but god forbid that it costs _you_ anything? WTF? Seriously. You preach at me that we're all employees and employers, but... what, you are more equal than her there?
Anyway, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't start looking for a new one.
Let's keep it simple this time: are you aware of such a situation where anyone anywhere was sued for changing their pizzeria, or ordering more Italian than Chinese? Or do you think that repeating the same falsehood three times somehow makes it true, like in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting Of The Snark?
IOW, if your support for discrimination hinges on such false scenarios -- as it usually tends to -- colour me unimpressed.
Aaand there's the third time.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
So how long till it can be done on fetuses?
You don't seem to understand this newfangled "burden of proof" concept.
It's not my burden to prove the negative. Otherwise I could equally go "aliens live among us unless you can prove that they don't." If you want to claim that something exists, it's your burden to provide the evidence, not mine to check all nanny agencies and unions and make sure none of them have a policy to leave toddlers unsupervised.
IOW it's BS because it's unsupported. It's that simple. If you actually support the claim, sure, then it stops being BS.
And the same ought to apply to that slippery slope scenario. It's not my job to give you promises that it won't happen. If you think you can objectively make a case of that kind of thing happening, go ahead. Otherwise it's just another unsupported claim.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was unpopular for her views on eugenics. Too soon after Nazi Germany and their experiments with eugenics. But, to some degree, eugenics might be unavoidable.
We already have genetic counselors. How is that different from eugenics, I don't know. Perhaps a matter of degree. Many of us already deliberately avoid childbearing to avoid transmission of a wide variety of congenital diseases.
This genetics testing helps to improve detection of more subtle defects, and it can give the 'all clear' for other potential issues. Imagine that some dread disease appeared in your family tree and you feared transmitting it. Getting tested could give you the 'all clear' to have children.
I know of a case where a couple had a child that couldn't sweat. It was congenital. They had another child. I don't recall if that additional child also had the issue. But I can assure you that if I knew of this problem in my genetic makeup, I would be seeking donor genetic material to substitute for my evidently dangerous material.
Best regards.
Are you trolling or was that a serious statement?
We learn more from adversity. Having the perfect child doesn't teach us anything. I would posit that many of those parents who have to deal with children with disabilities learn a lot more about parenting and selflessness than those whose children are considered "normal" by society.
Take a moment to consider life from the disabled child's point of view. Obviously, you didn't think this one through.
Best regards.
Family history can give you the clues of what to look for. But family history does not mean that a person has actually inherited a gene with a defect. That's where this sort of DIY genetic screening can come in handy. If your family has a history of a disease, one that you don't want to transmit to your offspring, then this sort of testing can be a godsend. You might discover that you did not get the gene(s) for the disease.
Best regards.
Ever heard of the Ptolemaic model of the world? It seemed correct, but new and new facts required more and more exceptions until collapsing under their weight. Once you begin talking about "shades of grey" and "exceptions where needed", you admit, your model is junk...
The workers wanting to bargain collectively aren't evil — they are doing, what's best for them. What is evil are the laws, that recognize unions as anything more than a group of people willing to associate with each other... No such laws should exist. A "union" of New York City transit workers should have no more legal recognition, that the community of Slashdot posters.
Moreover, given that unions are organizations set up with the explicit goal of maintaining and raising the price of what their members are selling (their own labor), they should be viewed as monopolies, subject to "trust-busting" laws.
If Staples and Office Depot were prevented from merging with each other for fear, the price of office supplies would go up, why do we allow our supply of healthcare, education, transportation, as well as crime- and fire-fighting to be controlled by the price-fixing monopolies?
My argument, for the last time is that we are all employers, and, when considering any employment-regulating law (such as the ban on the use of genetic-testing by employers, implicitly suggested at the top of this thread), we should apply it to ourselves from the other end too: do I want this (or similar) law to control my interactions with all these people I hire: food takeout, gardener, nanny, cab-driver?
For a particular example, I don't want my nanny to have above-average incidence of sickness — even it is not contagious — because, any time she can't show up, I have to skip my work. So if, when interviewing candidates, I can quickly check their health, I'd want to be able to do it. This makes me sympathetic to the other employers wanting healthy employees. Someone of poor health may try to compensate with something else (higher productivity, better education, willingness to accept lower pay, whatever), but any bans on the use of any criteria are just that: Illiberal.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.