Regulating Advertising Practices of DTC Genetic Testing Companies?
The Genetics & Public Policy Center (GPPC) has commissioned a 50 state survey of “laws that could potentially be used to protect consumers against unfair or deceptive trade practices by DTC genetic testing companies.” You can see the full survey here (pdf) or you can jump directly to the conclusion: “The survey reveals that while all states have general consumer protection statutes, none has laws that directly address genetic testing.”
This conclusion comes as no surprise given the reality that, from railroads to the internet to consumer genomics, scientific and technological innovation inevitably outpace the corresponding and often necessary legal and regulatory response. Odds are that if the GPPC updates its survey eighteen months from now the results will be materially different.
I disagree with the premises of the GPPC survey, which is that it is important to have at hand laws to protect consumers against unfair or deceptive trade practices by DTC genetic testing companies and that specific laws would be preferred. The unfair or deceptive trade practices of a few DTC genetic testing companies can be dealt with under current law, including federal consumer protection law. Neither GPPC, nor any other group, has put forth a credible argument as to why a consumer needs to be protected more stringently from information on what his or her essential being is made of — genetics — than from any other information. And even if state or federal laws forced a consumer to pay a doctor to order the genetic tests for the consumer, the consumer would still be able to find out the informaton from the doctor under current laws giving consumers rights to their medical records. So why all the fuss? Finally, what are the ethics of refusing to permit consumers to know about their own bodies? Isn’t there a protected privacy interest lurking in the background? Or should we all just agree that doctors know best and that we should pay them for the priviledge of finding out about ourselves.