genomeboy.com

For those few of you who are not regular readers of the European Journal of Clinical Investigation, I call your attention to the current issue. It features a debate between those who believe genetic risk information ought to be available to anyone with $985 who wants it, and paternalistic men in white coats defending the status quo those who believe it ought to be vetted by randomized clinical trials.

Gulcher and Stefansson:

The man who knows the nature of his disease is more likely to seek appropriate help to treat it and by the same logic, a man who knows the risk he has of developing a disease is more likely to seek help to mitigate the risk. It is also important to recognize that by learning about the genetic risk you have of diseases, you are simply learning certain aspects about who you are.

Ransohoff and Khoury:

If [randomized clinical trial] data are considered necessary to understand benefits vs. harms for a particular application, then so be it…RCTs may be needed indeed, unless we can be satisfied that the new test detects the same spectrum and subtype of disease as the old test and that intervention response is similar across the spectrum of disease [27]. These principles need to be applied, on a case-by-case basis, to personal genomic tests.

Okay then. We’ll see y’all in about eight years.

(Hat tip: Dana Waring)