February 19, 2009

Licensing your genetic information to 23andME

23andME is a "direct-to-consumer" DNA testing company that is raising many ethical issues in the genetics and the personalized medicine world.

Dr. Murphy's Gene Sherpas Blog has many interesting thoughts on these issues and is one of my favorite online readings at the moment.

In his last post Dr. Murphy questions: why Facebook and not 23andME?

Why in the hell do you care about that Drunk Photo more than you care about the information contained in your genome. That Drunk Photo is only a snapshot of your poor decisions at 21, easily explained away. But your genome? How do you explain away an APOE e4 genotype? What about a Huntington's Genotype? Familial Hypercholesterolemia?

I definitely think there should be more awereness on this topic.

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