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Much Ado about Nothing

American education is in such a state of decline and confusion that the following new program, with all its pros and cons, seems tantamount to a mad hatter's tea party. We reproduce a description of it from Nature in all its carefully nuanced and agonizing detail. We suggest that rather than fretting over whether DNA testing companies might use predatory marketing on teenagers or students be pressured into making purchases and be psychologically damaged by DNA results, the school authorities worry about real threats like the fast food poisons served up in the cafeteria franchises on their campuses. Or overpriced and watered down textbooks. Or alcohol in dorms. Or date rape. Or just about anything else.

A DNA education

Nature 465: 845-46 16 June 2010

Taking personal genetic testing into the classroom brings ethical and legal sensitivities to the fore. Although personalized genetic testing is still very new and controversial, its increasing use in health care seems inevitable — a trend that makes it essential to give consumers and physicians a better education in the technology's strengths and weaknesses.

That was the rationale behind an announcement made last month by the College of Letters and Science at the University of California, Berkeley. This year, instead of sending its incoming students a book for later discussion in class, the college will send them a kit to swab their DNA. If they so choose, students can send in their sample to be analysed for three common gene variants that indicate how an individual metabolizes alcohol, lactose (found in dairy products) and folic acid, a vitamin common in leafy green vegetables.The impulse behind Berkeley's announcement was commendable.

But officials there were too hasty in designing the programme, as evidenced by the firestorm of criticism it triggered and the changes the university has instituted in response. For example, each student's kit will now include not just details of the measures being taken to safeguard and anonymize the data and descriptions of the genes to be tested, as originally planned, but also information about the ethical and legal issues surrounding genetic testing. In addition, the university has modified a contest that accompanies the programme: the prize will no longer be a full genetic test conducted by a commercial testing company, which could be perceived as an endorsement of such firms, but will instead be cash.

Finally, organizers have decided to hold off revealing the tests' results until just before a lecture at which the benefits and limits of genetic testing, as well as the three chosen genes, will be discussed in detail. They will also give an accompanying lecture on the ethical and social dimensions of genetic testing. And students will be able to seek private counselling about their results if they wish.

Although it was wise of Berkeley to make these improvements, concerns remain. The university contends, for example, that there will be no pressure on students to participate in the genetic testing. Not only will they be told it is entirely optional, but students — or in the case of those under 18 years of age, their parents — will sign an informed consent document. Moreover, faculty members will never learn which students participated and which did not. But critics still worry about indirect pressure: the very fact that the kits are being sent to all of the college's incoming students could give them the impression that their participation is expected, in which case their choice may not feel so free.

A telling contrast in approach has been provided by Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, which announced a similar course designed for medical students shortly after Berkeley announced its programme. Recognizing the potential for controversy from the outset, Stanford officials first appointed a task force of basic scientists, clinicians, legal professionals, genetic counsellors, ethicists and students who spent a year designing precautions against coercion and conflicts of interest by the institution, and working out access to counselling.

The result is a well-thought-out programme — which also includes a research component designed to test a commonly held belief: do students truly learn better when the information presented to them is of personal relevance?

That said, the Berkeley and Stanford programmes are both still experimental. No one has all the answers to the issues they raise, which is why designing such curricula will involve constant refinement and evolution. It is shortsighted for critics to oppose such endeavours on the grounds that experts don't yet know how to interpret genetic information or how to integrate it into medical care. That is changing rapidly — and these two programmes are only the beginning of a long conversation that needs to happen on campuses worldwide.