In her personal health column in the New York Times, Jane Brody writes that for consumers who are using direct-to-consumer genetic tests to discover their medical risks, testing is "fraught with potential dangers." Those dangers range from receiving false reassurance to a lack of federal oversight to uncertainty about clinical validity. " For the moment, regardless of what a genetic test might show, the best course is to follow the usual recommendations about adopting healthful living habits and avoiding exposure to noxious substances," Brody writes.
The direct-to-consumer field continues to grow. Illumina announced yesterday that they delivered their first personal genome sequencing to Hermann Hauser, as our sister publication In Sequence reports. At Genetic Future, Daniel MacArthur says this is "a shot across the bow for Complete Genomics" which just raised $45 million to build a personal genome sequencing center.