WASHINGTON
DNA tests for disease can’t be trusted, probe contends
A government investigator told members of Congress yesterday that personalized DNA tests claiming to predict certain inheritable diseases are misleading and offer little or no useful information. An undercover investigation by the Government Accountability Office found that four genetic testing companies delivered contradictory predictions based on the same person’s DNA. Investigators also found that test results often contradicted patients’ actual medical histories. The Food and Drug Administration submitted DNA samples from five staff members to four different genetic testing companies. When considering the same disease, the companies’ results contradicted each other nearly 70 percent of the time, according to the GAO.
(Comment: It is disturbing to realize that some women are actually removing healthy breasts in response to testing like this. Fortunes have been spent on this “science.”)
