Speaking of genetics, it seems like everyday now there is stream of wire stories on genetics, sometimes cast as scare-stories, at other times they sound more like sales pitches.

From two days ago, a piece that go lots of attention:

To claim someone has ‘Viking ancestors’ is no better than astrology

I think the author of that piece is painting genetic testing too broadly, but he’s also caught up in a Guardian vs. Telegraph thingy too.

And just over the transom from AP:

At more colleges, classes on genetics get personal
(and the backgrounder Q&A: THE SCIENCE BEHIND PERSONAL GENETICS TESTING ).

They read like front pieces for 23andMe (which is not inherently a bad thing, just something about which awareness might help frame the article.) The AP writer though throws this out:

The class, taught at Iowa for the first time, is part of a growing movement in higher education to tackle the rapidly advancing field of personal genetics, which is revolutionizing medicine and raising difficult ethical and privacy questions. The classes are forcing students to decide whether it is better to be ignorant or informed about possible health problems — a decision more Americans will confront as the price of genetic testing plummets and it becomes more popular.

That’s always thrown into one of these newswire stories, but really, what are the supposed ethical questions?

Near I can tell, there really are only two. Note that it is already illegal for companies in this country to use your genetic information against you, so that is not one of them.

The two questions are this:

1) Are you able or willing to handle the medical information that is available regarding the implications of genotyping? In other words, are you a hypochondriac or at the other extreme living in denial?

2) If you and a close relative (sibling, parent, grandparent) are both tested, genotyping will reveal if a NPE (non paternity event) has occurred. Are you able to deal with handling this information in your family? Note that this is very similar too (and in some case will be the same) question adoptees and/or adopters already face.

So, that’s it. That is what the “questions”, and IMO in a world that is occupied with killing itself one way or another those questions are not intractable (though they may in individual circumstances seem overwhelming.)