Matter has a very long feature by my friend Virginia Hughes, Uprooted, on how personal genomics is changing, and sometimes disrupting, family relationships. I sat in on one session at the Consumer Genetics Conference last week, and an audience member expressed worry about how genetic results might cause family disruption. This individual was actually a faculty member who wanted to introduce personal genomics into the classroom as a way to educate, but was wary of these sorts of side effects. Even neglecting the reality that paternity uncertainty is likely far less pervasive among the sorts whose parents would be enrolling their offspring at universities in the Boston area, these worries always have to be predicated by the fact that even dodging this ethical gray zone in the specific case only delays the near-future inevitable. Unless medical authorities ubiquitously and invariably selectively shield this sort of information from the relevant parties the widespread adoption of genetic analysis as a consumer product will result in exposure of this sort of information. Though it may seem crazy preemptive testing of all offspring to ascertain biological relatedness of putative parents may simply be the best way to head off this issue, which will be like a ticking time bomb.
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