Brandom Keim leaves this comment:
It’s easy to see genomic data regulation in romantic narrative terms — The plucky little guys who want to be free! The big, bad institutions who want to control them! — and it’s also a trap. Interpreting genomic information in a medically useful way is very, very complicated. It’s easy to do badly — and people may make life-altering decisions based on bad information.
Gene-testing companies already have a track record of offering tests unsupported by unsupported by clinical evidence, such as CYP450 testing to determine antidepressant dosage. A let-the-market-regulate-itself, buyer-beware approach isn’t any more desirable than it would be for new drugs.
We’re discussed this before. The shorter perspective from me is that on principle I don’t object to regulation, but when viewed across the constellation of things which our government regulates, I don’t see the case for direct-to-consumer genomic services being monitored closely. A result from 23andMe will not kill you, though it may lead to a sequence of actions which may kill you. But this is unfortunately a problem with the whole diet industry, which is often based on unsupported fads and fashions, and has a much larger social impact. Nutrition is …