The only company mentioned in the article is DNAdirect, noting that hundreds of customers paid for tests costing from $175 to $3,456 to ensure that no third party (including a doctor) had access to results.
Victoria Grove wanted to find out if she was destined to develop the form of emphysema that ran in her family, but she did not want to ask her doctor for the DNA test that would tell her.
She worried that she might not be able to get health insurance, or even a job, if a genetic predisposition showed up in her medical records, especially since treatment for the condition, alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, could cost over $100,000 a year. Instead, Ms. Grove sought out a service that sent a test kit to her home and returned the results directly to her.
Harmon addresses the concerns of those who are afraid that genetic information may be used against them, of doctors who say patients who "could make more informed health care decisions if they learned whether they had inherited an elevated risk of diseases like breast and colon cancer refuse to do so because of the potentially dire economic consequences."
Others, she writes, enter "a kind of genetic underground, spending hundreds or thousands of dollars of their own money for DNA tests that an insurer would otherwise cover, so as to avoid scrutiny. Those who do find out they are likely or certain to develop a particular genetic condition often beg doctors not to mention it in their records."
“It’s pretty clear that the public is afraid of taking advantage of genetic testing,” said Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health. “If that continues, the future of medicine that we would all like to see happen stands the chance of being dead on arrival.”
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[..]The only company mentioned in the article is DNAdirect, noting that hundreds of customers paid for tests costing from $175 to $3,456 to ensure that no third party (including a doctor) had access to results.[..]
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, and what guarantee has given to clients DNAdirect. I suspect it is a question of insurance.
Thanks for posting this.