Two government agencies, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC), are being advised to act as "gatekeepers", to limit citizen's knowledge of our own DNA.
Specifically, the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University is recommending that the FDA regulate claims made by genetic testing services (especially direct-to-consumer tests), and provide more stringent oversight of the 1,500 currently available genetic tests, and for the FTC to “take decisive action against companies making false or misleading claims about the benefits of genetic testing".
Sounds reasonable, right? Wrong.
First, taking a genetic test can't hurt you physically. If someone sells a flawed genetic test, the word will get out pretty quickly, and that vendor will lose credibility. It's self-policing. But nobody will be hurt.
Second, the results of a genetic test are objective facts. If a test shows you have variant A (or B or C) of a gene, it's simply a fact about you. The vendors of genetic tests are simply providing you with objective facts about yourself. If insurance companies won't pay for a genetic test, that's their decision, but direct-to-consumer tests should not be regulated, except for basic quality.
Third, many scientists and others will offer interpretations or claims about the results of your genetic tests, in a vast marketplace of ideas. The science (and therefore the accuracy of the claims) will improve every year. Some people making these claims will have more credibility than others. But there are ways to handle this, without government involvement. We each have 20,500 genes, all coming in different variants or flavors. The government can't possibly keep track of all the claims made on each gene variant, much less attest to their veracity.
What does it mean if I possess variant A of gene XYZ? Scientists (and bloggers) around the world will have opinions on the function of each gene variant. That's a democratic messy process, and ultimately it leaves the consumer.to weigh the credibility of the source. Some (perhaps most) claims will ultimately be proven incorrect, especially claims by those scientists who are under constant pressure to be politically correct instead of scientifically correct.
Still, the government should keep its distance, as it did with the birth of the Internet, and the regulation of herbal medicines. Extreme government involvement in genetics is, ultimately, eugenics. The future of genetic understanding will come through collaboration, community, contention, and debate, not government control.