14 DAY TRIAL // A UK authority has recently taken a stand against the private genetic test industry, which, it says, needs more regulations, in order to ensure that the results it puts forth are reliable. The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee argued that there was too much leeway at the moment for the private sector, and that numerous bogus claims were being made, which was unacceptable. Members of the Committee talked especially about the tests that predicted the risk of contracting diseases later on in life for the patients seeking out this type of diagnostics. These assessment methods need a serious scientific review before they are marketed to the general public, the BBC News informs.
The most pressing concern, the authority said, was that the boom recorded in genetic screening after 2000 had led to a large number of people asking health-care companies for such a test, in order to get an idea of the chances they had of developing diseases such as Alzheimer's, or heart troubles in the future. In the nine years since the human genome was fully mapped, more and more companies have begun to offer such services, but the problem is that they do not offer their clients a second opinion, or support in understanding and dealing with the news they've just received.
Another important issue is the fact that a large number of companies offering this type of services are based outside the United Kingdom, which means that they are outside of the control exercised by British authorities. The Committee proposed a voluntary code, which would have the direct effect of improving the quality of these services, while at the same time ensuring that fraudsters and those making and giving bogus claims and results disappear from the market.
“We will carefully consider the recommendations before formally responding,” the representative of the Department of Health said and left to be understood that the government fully supported this initiative. Genetic testing company owners based in the UK also pinpointed that more regulations that would eliminate those tarnishing the name of the industry were welcomed. “It is completely wrong to give people results without offering counseling,” the Founder of UK-based genetics company GeneticHealth, Brian Whitley, explained.