How Does Genetic Testing Help the Health Consumer? (1:05)
Genetic testing will give consumers far more diagnostic information and treatment options once it is widely available. The future isn't set in stone, but HealthMaker Joe DeRisi, PhD describes the potential benefits of genome sequencing in this video.
Read Transcript
Although it's too early to tell, we will be predicting the future because we don't have all these genetic associations that will be required yet. It's undoubtedly going to be the case that consumers will be able to make very informed decisions about their healthcare and will have greater certainty about what their genetic code means for the development of chronic disease, or other attributes.
We don't know what those might be yet and we don't know how strong those associations would be however what's absolutely certain was the decreasing cost of getting a genome sequence that it's going to happen no matter what. Now some of the other positive aspects of this is with things like cancer, for which cancer is not just one disease, it may be thousands of diseases.
Now knowing exactly which mutation was a driver in your cancer can enable you as a consumer to actually get a therapy designed for that mutation, that's a whole new world, it didn't exist 10 years ago.
Joe DeRisi, PhD, is a pioneer in genetic research techniques to understand the behavior of malaria and further prevention and treatment. He discusses the ethical issues of biomedical and genetic research.
3:24