This review is regarding the controversy of DNA testing provide directly to the consumers. There are many types of test that you can take at home, paternity, gender prediction and risk assessment. . Theses test are at drugstore near you, alongside the aspirin and greeting cards, The only one that raises an issue is the one that will be the promise of answers to some of life's most personal mysteries: Am I at risk for Alzheimer's disease? Or diabetes ? Or obesity? Or cancer? There are about a total of twentysix DNA testing companies. The question “how will people respond to the scientific information? Particularly from genetic sources, it isn't clear and it may not tally scientific expectations.
There are two major DNA testing companies, deCODEme and 23&ME. In the late
1990s deCODE proposed to create the world's first populationwide genetic biobank by collecting data from the entire population of Iceland, which numbered 270,000 at the time.
The plan had these three major components: creating a genealogical database, collecting biobank specimens by means of which genotyping could be done, and creating a national electronic health record system to connect genetic data to each individual's phenotype.
As a step toward the personal genome, when the company announced that its deCODEme product were available for $985 to anyone who wishes to send a cheek swab to learn details about disease risk and ancestry. They were launched in November 2007 and became the first webbased service to offer a comprehensive genome scan and an online analysis of an individual's DNA.
23andMe began offering genetic testing in November 2007. Customers provide a saliva testing sample that is partially SNP genotyped and results are posted online. In 2008, when the company was offering estimates of "predisposition for more than 90 traits and
conditions ranging from baldness to blindness”. In 2009 23andMe split into three different companies and then
recombined in late 2010. The price of the full DTC testing service in the United States has reduced from $999 in 2007 to $99 in 2012. In 2013 the FDA banned the 23andMe company based out of California from marketing its service in the US, claiming 23andMe had failed to provide adequate information to support the claims it made about results. A month later they no longer genetic testing related to health.
Single nucleotide polymorphisms result of errors in copying and the presence of some variation seems to predispose people to a complex of diseases or alter their response to a drug. Although our understanding of susceptibility genes has advance. The test falls into a grey area between regulated medical test and unregulated “lifestyles” test and the HCG are calling for better consideration of how these test are regulated and indeed whether they should be sold straight to the consumer at all. There are some countries in France and
Switzerland that have banded principle genetic testing altogether. The HCG does not advocate the term “draconian” (which means excessively hard) approaches would probably be useless given that prohibition has not curbed sales of other products, whether medicines or music downloading over the internet.
Kari Stefansson head of DeCodeMe disagrees “the risk assessment you get is a definite” he says. “The studies that have been done to look for genetic risk factors are incredibly large. We are looking at tens and thousand of people and there isnt a single test in the health care system in Britain and elsewhere today that was introduced after as a Clinical
Validation.” He admits that we do not know all the factors that cause complex disease but asks “when are we going to know?”
Theresa Marteau , professor of health psychology at Kings college in London, points out that understanding risk factors does not
