Kyle Edwards, Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and The Ethox Centre, University of Oxford Caroline Huang, The Ethox Centre, University of Oxford An article based on this blog post has now been published in the May – June 2014 Hastings Center Report: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hast.310/full. Please check out our more developed thoughts on this topic there!
Direct to consumer genetic testing is growing rapidly; 23andMe has hired Andy Page to help the company scale – especially since it aims at having one million members by the end at the year (currently, since its launch, 23andMe has tested over 180,000 people around the world). While most ethics discussion about personal genomics has focused on the impact on individuals (is the risk of misunderstanding or bad news so bad that people need to be forced to go via medical gatekeepers or genetics counsellors? is there a risk of ‘genomization’ of everyday health? and so on), the sheer number of tested people and their ability to compare results can result in interesting new ethical problems, as a friend found out.
