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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."
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
They gypsy certainly has better applied psych skills; but, for a great many genetic(or suspected but not yet fully elucidated) conditions, 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, keeping their environment in mind(daddy's lung cancer probably doesn't count as "family history" if he was a chain-smoking asbestos miner, it probably does if he wasn't).
DNA sequencing has, certainly, gotten cheap enough that you might actually get a fairly accurate reading of a subset of your genome for a hundred bucks through the mail. However, I'd be quite surprised if, when it comes to predicting the consequences, which are what people actually care about, the method is going to outperform just looking at family history. In a lot of cases, the science simply isn't settled, at any price. Even where it is, you are going to be getting some mail merge algorithm, not a geneticist, or even a genetic counselor, for your hundred bucks.
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.
This is just a diagnostics test. It won't kill anyone.
Hopefully you'll never be in the market for a blood sugar test kit.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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.
Funny that they claim you retain copyright to your genetic information, just so they can claim you've given them permission to distribute it. In order for something to be copyrighted, it has to have creative content. That means you can't keep them from publishing it based on copyright law, but you can't grant permission based on copyright law either. They're trying to use this as an end-run against privacy and non-discrimination laws (HIPAA and GINA).
The service limitation clause is more of the same. They're pretending they're not providing a medical service, so they won't be held accountable. HIPAA privacy rules only apply to medical service providers. Very sneaky, these guys.
It's sad to think that people were mocking congress when they passed the genetic discrimination law. Now it appears they didn't go far enough. Maybe they should have made a genetic information protection law. The Supreme Court (or was it a federal court?) recently ruled that they can't patent genes (BRCA). So maybe there's hope.