Both good and bad can be said about Direct to Consumer (DTC) genetic testing. Some of the tests offered are probably better labeled Dreck To Consumer. Please, somebody, issue a cease and desist order for MTHFR testing. Or better yet, make it a criminal offense, punishable by sentencing to hard time at the Clockwork Orange Folic Acid Supplementation Rehabilitation and Penal Colony.
On the other hand, I am betting that established labs that currently offer clinically useful genetic testing will be migrating toward a greater presence in some form in the DTC market. This trend will be driven, by among other things, the demand on the part of some patients because of the convenience factor, the increasing uptake of BRCA testing by unaffected women, and by the potential income source it would create for labs. Whether clinicians like it or not, some form of DTC testing will probably play an increasing role in patient care in the near future. We will need to adapt to it, even if it makes some of us feel uneasy. My prediction is that we will initially see the most significant inroads in the area of DTC germline testing for cancer predisposition gene panels that include BRCA, Lynch, and their kindred.
Another factor that could drive DTC testing is that genetic counselors are sometimes viewed by clinicians, labs, and consumers as barriers to genetic testing. For patients, just finding the time in their busy lives for an hour long appointment and verifying insurance coverage for the consultation is no mean feat. Then there is the genetic counseling ethos of nondirectiveness and genetic counselors’ obsessive urge to (over?)educate patients, which can result in some patients coming out of the session saying No Thank You to genetic testing for now, much to the chagrin of their referring care providers. Not to mention the lack of genetic counseling manpower in some parts of the country. From this perspective, you start to understand why some critics claim there can be a reduced uptake of genetic testing when a genetic counselor is an intermediary between patient and laboratory.
Genetic counselors might cringe at the thought of patients entering the genetic testing pathway without having worked through the emotional implications, and possibly partially blind to the clinical and personal implications of positive, negative, and uncertain results. We somewhat paternalistically view ourselves as guardians of our patients’ medical and emotional well being. While genetic testing may be important for patients, at least for unaffected patients genetic testing is rarely an urgent matter. It can take place today, next week, a few months, next year, or at some point in the vague future. Perhaps that is not so terrible because a test result delivered at the wrong moment might backfire by causing the patient to go into a psychological tailspin and possibly wind up avoiding risk reducing and screening strategies. In this way, genetic counselors are more like filters than barriers, helping ensure that nobody takes a deep dive into their gene pool without first pausing and taking a deep breath.
This response may be partially and subconsciously influenced by the fact that our jobs depend on the steady stream of patients seeking genetic testing. DTC also takes away some of the “gatekeeper” power inherent in our positions. Conflict of interest affects us in ways that can make us too uncomfortable to acknowledge that it might it shape our beliefs and attitudes.
Enter DTC into this drama, stage right. If you are a patient who has a few hundred bucks to spare, you can avoid carving a chunk of precious time out of your busy schedule to set up a genetic counseling appointment (and maybe 2 or 3 appointments, depending on the provider’s policy of requiring separate appointments for counseling, test, and results disclosure), avoid those incomprehensible (non)explanations of benefits from health insurers, and with saliva testing skip the unpleasantness of a blood draw (although saliva collection has its own icky issues). Those forward-thinking online genetic counseling services that are unaffiliated with specific labs may help mitigate some of these perceived barriers, but maybe not enough for the majority of patients. DTC labs make it pretty easy to sign up for genetic testing, no muss, no fuss, never needs ironing. If I am honest with myself, in some situations – and maybe more often than I am willing to acknowledge – the “hassles” of genetic counseling may very well serve to discourage a goodly number of patients from undergoing genetic testing.
One concern about DTC is the way that labs may try to portray their tests to patients. Labs typically strive to act in patients’ best interests and try to make sure that patients get the genetic testing they need. By and large I find them to be just as committed as I am to providing excellent patient care. But at the end of the day they are businesses, and even if they have noble aspirations, it is in their best interests for as many patients as possible to undergo genetic testing. This can subtly influence their advertising under the rubrics of patient education and patient empowerment.
The best example I can think of to illustrate this point is the websites of many labs that offer cancer genetic testing, DTC or otherwise, which often cite the high end of disease risks in hereditary cancer syndromes. Labs aren’t lying to patients when they quote 80-90% lifetime breast cancer risks or whatever. But it certainly makes their genetic tests look more clinically critical than, say, the 40-50% risks found in some studies. It’s not that the 40-50% risk is necessarily closer to the “true” risk than 80-90%. The point is that there a range of risk estimates out there and which risks one chooses to present can be influenced by many factors.
Here is one lesson I have learned from ~34 years of genetic counseling with about a jillion patients: Nobody undergoes genetic testing until they are emotionally ready. Sometimes that readiness is thrust upon the patient, such as when a patient is diagnosed with cancer and has to make treatment choices fairly quickly. But for unaffected patients, some emotional triggering event(s) needs to occur before they make a genetic counseling appointment. Examples of triggering events might include reaching an age when the patient’s own parent was diagnosed with cancer or when their own child reaches the age the patient was when the patient’s parent was diagnosed; having a false positive “scare” on a mammogram; a recent cancer diagnosis in a loved one; a media celebrity such as Angelina Jolie sharing a personal cancer story; reaching a certain stage in life where, as one patient put it, “It was time to start acting like an adult” (which I suspect for many people is the incipient stages of facing their own mortality); having a grandchild; or gazing at your child one day and realizing that you might want to be around for your kindergartener’s college graduation.
If my observation about what leads patients to genetic testing is correct, it will be interesting to see if affordable, convenient, DTC genetic testing will itself become the trigger event that nudges patients into undergoing genetic testing. Would this be good or bad? Will we see a rapid proliferation of genetic testing for hereditary cancer or other syndromes if DTC testing becomes widely available? Will this translate into clinical gains that are also economically cost effective, such as increased uptake of risk-reducing surgery and high risk screening? Who will watchdog labs to assure that they offer a quality, uniform, and trustworthy product that patients can depend on without first doing in depth research about depth of coverage, variant calls, and the other arcana of genetic testing? If recent calls for cancer genetic testing for essentially everyone, such as the proposal by Dr. Mary-Claire King or Canada’s Screen Project, become widely embraced, will DTC be the most efficient way to deliver the service? Will life insurers start requiring genetic testing before a consumer is eligible for a policy? How often will untrained care providers and patients misinterpret test results? Will it turn out that genetic counselors are barriers to genetic testing or are they filters who help ensure that the appropriate patients get the appropriate testing at the appropriate time in their lives? Will genetic counselors wind up largely becoming, as I have predicted for years, phenotype counselors who meet with patients after genetic testing?
Nobody knows the answer to these questions, although a lack of data has never been a barrier to strong opinions. This is the time to plan research studies that can help address them. The genetic counseling profession needs to continuously adapt and evolve. But it needs to do so without losing its soul.
Thanks again to Emily Singh for help with realizing the graphics.
The DNA Exchange 