Because they say patients should have the right to decide for themselves whether to take the test. At the same time Myriad and others will track these tests, patenting mutations as they accumulate data on the fly about the worthiness of the test. This is unprecedented in clinical medicine and sets a very low standard for commercialization of other tests. Absent the care of medical geneticists and real genetic counseling, patients who request elective genetic testing for susceptibility may end up in harm's way. Indeed, the marketplace is no place to do serious epidemiological study of the worthiness of a genetic test.
Ethical issues abound in genetic testing.
But the new problem has more to do with the context of genetic testing services than with exotic choices about what kind of life is good enough. If we are to make any progress in integrating genetic testing into the general practices of medicine, we must begin by setting some ground rules about what training and which tests are good enough. Glenn McGee,PhD, assistant professor at The Center for Bioethics, teaches medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and has developed an on-line course on ethics and genetics.