1984

It’s how I was abducted at that age by my father during parents divorce.

Yes, I agree.

Again, that’s why doing marker-based gets the value without the sequence. I can tell some of your genotype based on phenotype (eg eye color). Testing for a few very discrete SNPs can save your life through knowing about drug reactions. Same as eye color, very small data point, not enough to do damage.

GINA provides some protection but I don’t think it’s sufficient.

However, PGx is not sequencing. I think that understanding drug reactions is important enough, and no worse from a privacy perspective than knowing what you’re allergic to, that it should be more widespread.

It’s not just the insurance companies, when you talk to individuals most people are very scared of this knowledge being permanent and public.

I’ve spent the last couple years working on making testing more available through employer benefits, I found many employers are on board with the idea, but many individuals are still scared.

I do think that pharmacogenomics (PGx) has the best chance of being widely available. It’s marker-based, not sequence based, which limits the amount of personally identifiable information that could get mishandled. And provides a lot of the benefits that you’re talking about.

When I’ve talked to employers, who would be on the hook for paying for this (and yes, employers are the one picking up the bill, not the healthcare administrators, most “insurance” in the US is really just paid by employers) they don’t like the idea of sequencing, but PGX makes a lot of sense, and the ROI is very clear.