Genetic testing could revolutionize the way patients, medical experts, and even insurers approach healthcare—but what happens to those whose test results suggest a lifetime of sickness and complications?
With genetic testing expected to become more accessible to everyone in the near future, one expert ponders on how genetic information should be handled.
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Tom Keenan, author of
Technocreep and a professor of environmental design at the University of Calgary, made note of how far genetic testing has come, and how much more advanced it could become in the years to come.
“Well everybody knows about 23andme.com, they were pretty much the original ones,” Keenan told
CBC News. “They do about one million DNA letters, one million base pairs. They are looking for things like your ancestry and certain diseases, but there is this amazing company down in Massachusetts that will do your entire genome, instead of talking about three million base pairs, [we are talking about] three billion base pairs. It is the kind of thing that, just a few years ago, the human genome project needed $3 billion in 10 years to do, now anybody pretty much can get it.”
Keenan explained that the aforementioned American company, Veritas Genetics, works with its clients to ensure that they fully understand their test results.
“You can only get this if you work with a US physician who orders it, and that physician is supposed to be your guide,” he said. “What they don’t want is somebody to say, ‘I have no risk of prostate cancer, I will stop getting tested for that.’ They don’t want people to make bad medical decisions. The company also includes 30 minutes on the phone with a genetic counsellor. They are doing everything they can to try to help you make sense of this information.”
Although testing costs about US$1,000, Keenan believes that those with the cash at hand will be more than willing to undergo testing.
“I think everybody who is rich and intelligent in the US is probably going to be doing it,” he said. “I know Calgarians who every year go down for an executive physical. They go to the Mayo Clinic or somewhere like that because they can afford it. They get complete body scans and I suspect this year they will also be getting their genome sequence because why wouldn’t they?”
As promising as genetic testing is, Keenan warns that there are ethical concerns surrounding how test results should be handled, especially in matters involving insurance.
“Basically, your doctor is obligated in Canada to give out information on your genetic testing. If an insurance company goes to the hospital you were in or [to] your doctor and says, ‘We want the genetic results,’ then that has to be disclosed, whereas in Australia the clinician can say no. There are laws in the US that prohibit the use of genetic information. There is actually a move, bill S-201, to give Canada a similar law that would ban discrimination based on your genetics,” Keenan pointed out.
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