The Wide, Wild World of Genetic Testing

NY Times ^ | September 12, 2006 | ANDREW POLLACK

[neverdem]

A MEDICAL journal in March published a study suggesting that drinking coffee can raise the risk of heart attack, but only for people with a gene that makes them slow metabolizers of caffeine. Experts called the finding intriguing, but said it needed to be validated by others and its health implications better understood.

Still, Consumer Genetics, a company formed only a month earlier, is already advertising a genetic test that purports to tell consumers whether they can continue to enjoy their morning jolt.

That is how fast things can move in the rapidly expanding, chaotic and largely unregulated world of direct-to-consumer genetic testing, an industry at the confluence of two of the greatest of recent technological achievements — the Human Genome Project and the Internet.

With a few mouse clicks, consumers can order tests that promise to tell them if they are at risk for particular diseases, to trace their ancestry back to the time of Genghis Khan, to help choose which antidepressant would be best for them, to identify the sex of their fetus as few as five weeks into pregnancy and to give advice on diet or exercise.

About two dozen companies, most started in the last few years, now offer tests, which generally cost from just under $100 to several hundred dollars. Usually, consumers receive a kit requiring them to swab the inside of their cheek to obtain a DNA sample, which they mail back to the company.

Some of the companies say their business is growing quickly. “People are beginning to take a whole lot of...’’

--snip--

The nutrigenetic tests were criticized at the Senate hearing. The Government Accountability Office said that it had found “personalized” supplements costing $1,200 a year with the same ingredients as vitamins that sold for $35 a year at a store.

[neverdem]

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[Quix]

THanks.

[SunkenCiv]

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