DNA Consultants Home of the DNA Fingerprint

In the last blog post, we responded to the call of Nature (the journal, that is) in “Genetics without Borders.” In this, we examine the second of three editorials in this week’s issue concerning regulation of DNA testing companies:  “Putting DNA to the Test.” 

It should be pointed out at the beginning that the wrath of the editors descends in unequal fury on commercial enterprises. They are not as irate at ancestry companies as “personal genomics providers.” They seem to have in mind mostly concerns like 23andme, which promises for $399.00 to sequence your personal genome and give you “access to all health, disease, and trait reports” maintained by its staff, together with “ all ancestry features and raw data download.” To the editors of Nature, this is akin to practicing medicine and genetic counseling on the Internet. Spit into a cup, discover your personal DNA sequences and get an email when a medical article mentions your nucleotide position.

The presumptuous and condescending attitude of the editors is evident in their first paragraph (italics added):  “The availability of affordable, direct-to-consumer genetic tests has mushroomed, leaving regulation lagging behind. Dozens of companies now offer inexpensive (elsewhere: cheap) home kits that allow people to spit into tubes, send the samples for DNA analysis and receive a report that allegedly details their ancestry or their possible susceptibility to a long list of disorders that have been linked — often tenuously — to particular genes. But the value of these tests remains debatable, which is why (bad predication in our grammar book) the industry needs a strong set of quality standards and codes of conduct to protect both its consumers and its own credibility.”

Aside from poor writing (which seems to be a requirement for an advanced degree in the natural sciences), there are numerous examples of logical fallacies in this and the rest of the article. Perhaps Wittgenstein was right. What cannot be put into words cannot be thought. What can only be poorly expressed is poorly thought.

It is unclear whether the regulators would extend the same benevolent protection to the academic researchers who also consume genomics laboratory services. A case can be made that even their understanding is not always perfect and up-to-date. Elsewhere in the same issue of Nature are warnings to fellow scientists who make exaggerated claims about their research. The editors also reprove wayward brethren who seek to dip more than once in the immortalizing waters of the Pierian springs, by submitting their work to multiple journals, often under different guises or false pretenses.

The world of science has so much dirty underwear of its own, it is surprising it wishes to examine that of others. Credibility seems to be in short supply everywhere.

Without dissecting what is a mess of snips to start with, let us draw attention to one scenario the would-be regulators raise. “Customers,” they predict, “will frequently receive results telling them only that they face the ambiguous possibility of a somewhat elevated risk of a little-understood disorder.... If the ambiguous, slightly elevated risk relates to a frightening condition such as breast cancer, some individuals might feel compelled to undertake drastic and perhaps needless measures, such as prophylactic mastectomy [surgical removal of a breast to avoid cancer].”

I read this horrific statement to a friend of mine over the phone, who said she had been in that exact situation. Doctors found a lump in her breast. Knowing that ancestry testing had placed her in a category of predisposition to developing breast cancer, she underwent, after due deliberation, “prophylactic mastectomy." “I was thankful I took the DNA test,” she said, “because it gave me information that helped me evaluate my risks.” She says she is sure that if she had not taken the step she did, she would have breast cancer today.

It is arrogant of scientists to think they must protect people from information. This is the stance of a totalitarian state that controls and censures the information consumed by the populace, or of a state religion such as that which ruled supreme during the Middle Ages. It was attempted with disastrous results in so-called “activist era” of the Federal Trade Commission during the 1960’s and 1970’s under Commissioner Mary Gardiner Jones. An institutional ideology of this sort assumes that consumers require protection from scientific information that they may misinterpret and that may lead to personal or social distress. For example, misplaced information like this might lead historically disadvantaged communities to increase their distrust of the scientific establishment . . . . as though the scientific establishment didn’t do enough in that direction!

Another of the editors’ arguments against releasing genetic information to the populace is that genetic information is always evolving and may not be complete. Quoadusque? we may ask with Cicero. When will it be complete? Or complete enough? And who is to make that judgement?

Instead of mad, speculative and needless worry about consumers who are supposedly ignorant and defenseless, why don’t we let reason and the unimpeded flow of information take their course? Those two forces educated, up to a point, the scientists who are now trying to second guess the public. While it may have taught them a lot of facts, it did little apparently to sharpen their powers of philosophical reflection.