Public understanding of genomics

[Oxford Nanopore]

Interesting post here that people might want to comment on..

http://timesonline.typepad.com/science/2009/06/the-times-debate.html

[lry198010]

I really believe that, genetic test will popular in ten years, as the time when people understand that the genetic test just test the risk of the gene variation instead of determination of the disease.

[Terry V]

I am spending the final chapter of my thesis - which is generally on CNVs in psychiatric disease - on the topic of DTC testing and medical relevance of genetic research results. I have interviewed some experts from the fields of psychiatry, clinical genetics, and epidemiology. Interesting to see how different they all look at the future usibility of genetic associations and other genetic reserach results. Has anyone ever taken such a DTC test? Would be interesting to see results.

[Joann]

Can you get to Boston, Mass.?

If you have access Boston, Mass. by any means, you can sign up and volunteer to get your genome sequenced and see for yourself.

http://www.personalgenomes.org/

[Terry V]

More interested in interpretation

Thanks for the offer, Joann. I have actually thought of signing up, and am still contemplating. For the purpose of my societal chapter, I would actually be more interested in the interpretation that test provideers give to the variation they find. I know what happens in their labs (I am doing the same thing in our lab: sequencing, microarrays), but I would love to see what sort of medical reports they send to people who take the tests.

[Joann]

Scientific oversight encouraged

At this point, what you or any other interested scientist can do at any time is go to the NIH sponsored web site Gene Tests at

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/GeneTests/?db=GeneTests

look at the Clinical Test Listings and choose a gene (and a lab) of relevance that you would be interested in being tested for. That way, the diagnostic reports generated by the lab providing your test would go to you and would cover your personal genetics for that gene.

In fact, this might make a very interesting, informative organized group project/discussion.

[Terry V]

non-clinical testing labs

Hey Joann,

Thanks for this link. As far as can see, it displays a different type of genetic testing labs than the ones the original article was referring to, namely the certified, clinical testing labs within hospitals and public institutes. DecodeMe is not such a lab, nor is 23andMe, Navigenics and a whole other bunch of companies. That is the category that I would be interested in. Discussing their relevance and impact, especially since we know their tests are clinically not (yet) relevant, would be interesting.