you might learn more than you want to know
my neighbor told me the other day he had bought a genetic testing kit for his dog from petco because they weren’t sure what breed of dog she was*. i’ve heard of genetic testing kits for dogs but was surprised you can just walk into a petco and pick it up like you would some doggie treats.
seems i might not be the only one who thinks things like this may all be a little too casual. the fda is considering requiring a genetic testing company, pathway genomics, to provide information before they are allowed to sell their (human) genetics testing kits in walgreens, a pharmaceutical chain. until now, genetics testing was done in healthcare facilities and not within the fda’s scope of regulation. the fda is concerned that the test results may not be accurate and have “limitations based on existing science, and consumers should not be making important medical and lifestyle decisions based on these tests without first consulting a health-care professional”.
if the fda doesn’t get involved, you’ll soon be able to spend $19.99 to buy yourself a kit at any one of the 6,000 walgreens store in which you swab yourself for some saliva and send it to a lab. $79 will get you the results for drug-response (how the tester will respond to certain drugs), $179 get you “pre-pregnancy planning” results, $179 for health condition results and $249 for all three.
*the dog turned out to be a purebred shih-tzu, which was what they were told when they adopted her, even though she looks nothing like a shih-tzu.
**apparently, despite what we all learned in high school biology, the curling tongue is not a genetic trait.
photo courtsey of tamelyn
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