Just like with any great discovery, with genetic sequencing arose controversy. Who should stand between you and the right to see information about your own genetic code? The controversy about this shotgun sequencing strategy is if it should be used to create a personal genome scan and sold to the public. On one side, people are arguing that people being able to see their own DNA sequence is a basic civil rights. Also, this kind of DNA testing would greatly benefit health care financially. Four million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease, costing the health care system a staggering $500 billion a year. In the future, this shotgun-sequencing strategy will become widely used to sequence patients’ DNA and every medicine made will be personalized to target each patient’s disease. The purveyors of personal genomics insist that genomic medicine will become an integral part of modern health care. On the other hand, people against it say that patients are going to overreact if they get their genome sequenced. For example, a woman may see that she has the gene for breast cancer, which does not mean she will ever get breast cancer, and may want to get unnecessary surgery.
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What do you think?
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