Do-it-yourself DNA testing: A risk or a right?
By Jessica Pauline Ogilvie,
Los Angeles Times
| 04. 18. 2011
There are plenty of medical tests that consumers can give themselves at home — tests to finds out if they are pregnant, if they have a urinary tract infection, and if their blood sugar levels are too high or too low, to name just a few.
Do-it-yourself genetics tests are joining this list. After mailing a saliva sample to a lab, consumers can receive information about their genetic risk for a variety of diseases, including type 2 diabetes, Parkinson's disease and several types of cancer. They can also get predictions about how well they would respond to more than a dozen types of drugs. The results can be difficult to interpret, and they may not be reliable. No medical experts need be involved.
That has stirred controversy among doctors, geneticists, bioethicists and consumer advocates. Some believe that in bypassing health professionals, the tests are irresponsible at best and potentially dangerous at worst. Others feel that individuals who want their personal health-risk information should be able to get it, plain and simple. The Food and Drug Administration is weighing both sides...
Related Articles
Media coverage of recent developments in embryo gene editing might seem to suggest that gene-edited babies are close to becoming a reality. As tech billionaires eager to profit off of techno-eugenics invest in “designer baby” technologies, attempts to normalize heritable genome editing – which remains unsafe and raises significant ethical and societal concerns – are especially dangerous. It’s worth taking a closer look at these developments and what they mean, in a way that pushes back on narratives normalizing the...
By Roxanne Khamsi, The Atlantic | 07.07.2026
When Ludivine Verboogen and Romain Alderweireldt’s third child was born in Belgium in late 2015, they marveled at his long fingers. Perhaps one day he will be a famous pianist, they thought. But soon Ludivine grew worried that her son...
By Julia Métraux, Mother Jones [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 07.07.2026
During his 2015 State of the Union address, then-President Barack Obama announced what he promised would be an ambitious public health project. “Tonight, I’m launching a new Precision Medicine Initiative to bring us closer to curing diseases like cancer and diabetes...
By Carl Zimmer and Marco Hernandez , The New York Times | 07.01.2026
Scientists have long dreamed of discovering the alchemy by which chemicals can be turned into life. On Wednesday, a team at the University of Minnesota announced that it had taken a major step toward that vision.
Blending together dozens of...
