An article about Navigenics, a California company that recently started selling genetic scans, and how will we deal with this information...will we be all become hypochondriacs? New York has authorized the sale to residents for the service...and the company is advising that the information be kept out of medical files? The crazy reason for this as the article states is due to the fear of insurance 
companies using it to deny coverage or claims...the data world today is indeed scary as data bases get sold over seas and then are sold back to companies here in the US and there's almost no way of regulating this action...and the data bases may be anonymous, but run a query between 2 data bases that could provide some unique match and now you have a horse of a different color, a Query...still 2 anonymous data bases, but a "query" that relates both just like law enforcement uses for the search of criminal activity...done all the time...but the problems arise when it is not done in the course of good health care, but rather have a money oriented interest instead.
Back to the story though, this information is probably far more useful for the younger generation rather than baby boomers just simply due to age and we may have already been there, and done that on currently diagnosed diseases...but if interpreted correctly it's something that may not hurt anyone...just like everything else, we need some balance...so we don't all believe we are doomed for the worst...BD
Despite his training in geriatric medicine, Dr. Starer, 53, said he had little interest in his own genetic makeup and was skeptical about the benefits of knowing more. “I know what my father died of, and I know how my mother’s behaving,” Dr. Starer said. Beyond that, he said, he did not see how learning that he might have a higher-than-average risk of contracting Alzheimer’s disease, for example, would affect his lifestyle.
“This is just the beginning of a wave of information that is going to be made available to patients,” Dr. Kucherlapati said. “Members of my family do yoga and surf every day,” and still have a history of dying young from heart problems, Mr. Muir said. “It would be nice to know, I guess,” Mr. Muir said. Then again, he wondered, “Is it going to turn us all into hypochondriacs?”
On the Retail Frontier, Another Shop in SoHo for the Person Who Has Everything - New York Times
0 comments :
Post a Comment