Dr. Daniel MacAthur & Dan Vorhaus offer their takes on the recent hearings in Congress on the direct-to-consumer genomics industry, A sad day for personal genomics & “From Gulf Oil to Snake Oil”: Congress Takes Aim at DTC Genetic Testing. I guess I lean toward light regulation. I don’t think that DTC personal genomics will result in systemic decrease in human happiness, and tight regulation will increase the costs of innovation and constrain access and reduce affordability. Though I guess that for some that’s a feature, not a bug.
My main point, which I think I got across on the Genomes Unzipped comments is that fraud, error and misrepresentation are rife across many health-related sectors in American society. The nutrition and diet industry are prime examples. Bad journalism on the health beat causes way more suffering than DTC genomics kits ever will, as people who are not intelligent make precipitous decisions based on the latest result which managed to slip through the p-value gauntlet and are sexy enough to be written up in USA Today. And, there are widespread distortions within our health care sector which really need to be addressed (I’m thinking in particular of frank talk about end of life palliative care). With that as the basis for judgement I don’t think that the fraud and misrepresentation one can find in DTC personal genomics is exceptionally worrisome or notable to warrant such attention or focus. This is an inefficient allocation of concern and regulatory resources, driven more by the industry’s puffed up claims and the apocalyptic projections of the skeptics.