Category: Consuming Genetics: Ethical and Legal Considerations of New Technologies

People in a yoga class posing together

Are Wellness-Based Insurance Products Really a Win For Everyone?

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Anya Prince 

Insurers have long been in the business of selling a variety of life insurance products to their customers, but a new trend has them promoting wellness and encouraging customers to make healthy lifestyle choices through benefits programs. John Hancock’s Vitality program, for example, offers customers a free Fitbit, savings on annual life insurance premiums, and other discounts and perks for meeting fitness goals.

Other insurers are joining in this wellness game, offering their own versions of incentives and access to wearables in exchange for fitness goals. At first blush, these programs are a classic win-win situation similar to that behind workplace wellness programs. Customers/employees get free wearables. Win! Customers/employees (ideally) live longer due to healthy lifestyle choices. Win! Life insurers/employers have customers that pay premiums for more years before they die and a claim is paid out. Win!  Read More

Consumer Genetics: To Test or Not to Test?

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Marnie Gelbart and Nadine Vincenten

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing has entered our world with a big splash and opened the flood gates of genetic information. For over a decade, we have been out talking with people from all walks of life and listening to their stories. Whether we are speaking with scientists or non-scientists, we hear excitement, concerns, ambivalence  – sometimes all three at the same time – and not surprisingly, many many questions as people try to make sense of it all.   

Susan Domchek, executive director of the Basser Center for BRCA, recalls counseling a patient with a family history of breast, ovarian, and colon cancer. This patient had taken a DTC genetic test that looked at her BRCA genes, and the results led her to conclude that she was not at risk for the cancers that had burdened her family. However, the patient did not realize that the test only looked at 3 of the over 1,000 BRCA variants linked to an increased cancer risk. And because the test did not look at other genes implicated in cancer, the physician recognized that it may have underestimated her patient’s risk. What if the patient had seen a doctor who did not understand the limitations of the test? Might she have avoided taking potentially life-saving precautions?  Read More

ancestry dna kit box

Gamete Donor Anonymity is a Myth: Q&A With Seema Mohapatra

Alex Pearlman 1 Comment

By some accounts, 26 million people have undergone direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic or ancestry tests. While some of the results of these tests seem might seem obvious (I turned out to be half-Hungarian and half-Ashkenazi, to no one’s surprise), there have been a number of accounts in the media of test results that have been considerably more dramatic.

Some of the more shocking — and now shockingly common — scenarios are the ones in which a consumer finds out through a DTC test that they were donor-conceived, and that one or both of the parents who raised them are not their genetic relatives. Gamete donors, who often provide genetic material (eggs or sperm) with the promise of anonymity, are finding themselves the recipients of messages from genetic children they never intended to meet.

Gamete donors could argue that they have a right to privacy. But Prof. Seema Mohapatra suggests the idea of gamete donor privacy is no longer realistic, due to the state of genetic technology.

I sat down with Prof. Mohapatra to learn more about the many ethical and legal questions DTC genetic testing raises for donors, recipients, and clinics.

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image of a genetic screen

How Might we Approach Discussions on the Implications of Using Genetic Data from a Human Rights or Social Justice Perspective?

Alicia Ely Yamin Leave a comment

By Alicia Ely Yamin and Jonathan Chernoguz

To complement the Petrie-Flom Center’s annual conference this year, Consuming Genetics, the Global Health and Rights Project at Petrie-Flom (GHRP) convened a small meeting of feminists, students, and other activists. On May 16, Harvard University’s Global Health Education and Learning Incubator , which co-sponsors GHRP, hosted the forum in conjunction with Marcy Darnovsky and Katie Hasson of Center for Genetics and Society (CGS).

Focusing on “Gene Editing, Ethics, Rights and Health Equity Issues,” and in particular the irrevocability of germline gene editing, the meeting began with Marcy Darnovsky, Executive Director of CGS asking, “How might we begin the discussion from [the perspective of] human rights, feminism, equity, and social justice, rather than from the science and biotechnology?”

This question echoed some of those posed during the Consuming Genetics conference, for example, by Jonathan Kahn in interrogating the equivocation of social diversity and empirical diversity in genomic research.  Read More

Image of a 23andMe saliva collection kit

Getting to Know You: The Power Direct-to-Consumer Giants Have to Understanding Our Genetics

Clio Sophia Koller 1 Comment

After going back and forth for what felt like years, my curiosity won. I ordered the test and shipped off my sample. Three weeks later, the email arrived in my inbox. I logged into my online portal, scrolling past the bolded message informing of my “slightly increased risk” of Alzheimer’s Disease, instead, narrowing in on what I was looking for: how would 23andMe explain genetic risk alongside my results?

In theory, genetics offers an elegant, linear way to predict one’s future—setting up a narrative in which having “the Alzheimer’s gene” destines one to a very specific medical fate. The realities of genetics, however, are far more complex. Environmental factors, among others, mediate gene expression and diseases are usually the result of various (often unidentified) genes working together. Even considering Alzheimer’s, a disease with highly penetrant variants, my risk remains probabilistic, not destined.

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Graphical image of a genetic screen merging with algorithmic code

Do You Own Your Genetic Test Results? What About Your Temperature?

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Jorge L. Contreras

The popular direct-to-consumer genetic testing site AncestryDNA claims that “You always maintain ownership of your data.” But is this true?  And, if so, what does it mean?

For more than a century, US law has held that data – objective information and facts – cannot be owned as property. Nevertheless, in recent years there have been increasing calls to recognize property interests in individual health information. Inspired by high profile data breaches and skullduggery by Facebook and others, as well as ever more frequent stories of academic research misconduct and pharmaceutical industry profiteering, many bioethicists and patient advocates, seeking to bolster personal privacy and autonomy, have argued that property rights should be recognized in health data. In addition, a new crop of would-be data intermediaries (e.g., Nebula Genomics, Genos, Invitae, LunaDNA and Hu.manity.org) has made further calls to propertize health data, presumably to profit from acting as the go-betweens in what has been estimated to be a $60-$100 billion global market in health data. Read More

Cartoon image of a protein attached to a DNA double helix that has been spliced

Regulation of Human Genome Editing in the Dawn of the CRISPR Era

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Scott J. Schweikart

With the advent of CRISPR and the first babies born with edited genomes, gene editing technology is now cheaper and more accurate than it has been. And there is now a verifiable occurrence of heritable genome modification using CRISPR.

As such, human genome editing is naturally (and quite rightly) receiving world-wide attention. Scientists, bioethicists, lawyers, and policy makers are questioning what is the best course of action in the face of this new technology that promises great medicinal benefits, but also poses great and unknown risks. Read More

Back view of a doctor with his hands clasped behind his back holding a red stethoscope

Who are the Healthcare Providers Approving Consumer-Driven Genetic Test Orders?

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Emily Qian, Magalie Leduc, and Birgit Funke

Consumer driven genetic testing has rapidly expanded, to the point where some genetic testing companies have reached 10 million customers. These tests are being advertised in commercials and in ads on social media. Genetic testing can reveal a variety of information ranging from ancestry to predisposition for disease. While ancestry, fitness regimens, and food preferences may seem all fun and games, the potential of learning about a predisposition for a serious disease should not be treated lightly.

While a DNA-based ancestry report may not require scientific expertise to understand the results, the genetics of human disease are highly complex. Thus specialized training is necessary to accurately interpret genetic information in this context. However, with the development of specialized medicine, the growing variety of health care providers, and the growing number of available un-credentialed educational courses online and degrees in various scientific areas, it is difficult for consumers to determine who may be the best provider with the right credentials to help them understand their genetic results. Read More

Dna test infographic. Genome sequence map, chromosome architecture and genetic sequencing chart abstract data. Molecule structure genetic test.

Ethnic Identity and Genomics Research: Toward Creating Culturally Sensitive Policies and Practices

Genetics in Medicine Leave a comment

By Erin Turbitt and Megan C Roberts

Genomic discoveries are rapidly entering healthcare, further propelled by large nationally funded initiatives such as the “All of Us” program. However, minority groups risk not benefiting from these discoveries to the same degree as individuals of European descent. This is because most genomics research involves European descended individuals and genomic databases largely consist of data from these studies. Read More

petri dish with DNA fingerprint

3 Things You Should Know About the Petrie-Flom Center’s 2019 Annual Conference

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Breakthroughs in genetics have often raised complex ethical and legal questions, which loom ever larger as genetic testing is becoming more commonplace, affordable, and comprehensive, and genetic editing becomes poised to be a consumer technology. As genetic technologies become more accessible to individuals, the ethical and legal questions around the consumer use of these technologies become more pressing.

We are excited, therefore, to have many major thought leaders in this space discuss these issues at the Petrie-Flom Annual Conference, “Consuming Genetics: Ethical and Legal Considerations of New Technologies,” which will take place at Harvard Law School in May. Read More