Anyone catch the piece “Double Helix Dept: Ptooey!” in the Talk of the Town section of the New Yorker (Sept 22, 2008)? ‘Tis yet another take on 23andMe, the direct-to-consumer genetic testing company. Well-written and pithy, of course, it was nonetheless too lightweight to be of much practical use, except for a reference to deep-vein thrombosis and flying, and excess caffeine and heart attack. And presenting genetic testing as entertainment is dangerous.
Much of the short article was spit jokes. The other traits cataloged were: ear wax, peanut allergy, sprinting, freckles, sneezing in the sun, tongue rolling, an asparagus-like essence in pee, and alcohol-flush reaction. Of course anyone could have looked these up in OMIM, aka Mendelian Inheritance in Man, at any time over the last half-century or so.
The piece of fluff ends with an anecdote about a man lamenting a fate of being follicularly challenged. “It was observed that his father still had a full head of hair.” Anyone who’s taken Bio 101 or watched Seinfeld (hello George Costanza) should know that male pattern baldness is X-linked – inherited from a carrier mom, not a hairy dad.
When the Today Show covered 23andme last spring, at least they steered the flippant discussion of ear wax and such to a more serious note – the problems of DTC genetic testing in the absence of genetic counseling. The New Yorker turned the whole topic into a joke.
Genetics isn’t funny. People can be hurt by making decisions based on the info from these companies/websites delivered without benefit of genetic counseling. Making light of it is, at best, irresponsible.
Ricki Lewis is the author of Human Genetics: Concepts and Applications (McGraw-Hill Higher Education), now in its eighth edition, which has covered all of the above-mentioned traits for many years. She is also author of the novel Stem Cell Symphony and a fellow of the Alden March Bioethics Institute.