It was a journey that began with a simple question: How much do you want to know? When reporter John Lauerman, a 53-year-old father of two, decided to have his DNA sequenced--an increasingly common procedure-- he hoped to obtain a blueprint of his future health.
Instead, he found himself plunged into a world of uncertainty. He might get Alzheimer’s disease, he was told. He could suffer an abnormal blood clot in his heart or brain. As Lauerman criss-crossed the country seeking answers, he and colleague Robert Langreth uncovered the stories of others--a pregnant mother, a worried father, an enraged breast cancer patient--struggling with the medical dilemmas unleashed by the brave new world of genetic testing.
A Reporter's Unsettling Journey Into His DNA
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On the fourth floor of a red brick medical building in Boston’s South End is an office where few want to go -- where people get a frequently unwelcome glimpse of their future through a careful reading of their DNA.
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Four months after I walked into a lab at Harvard University and gave a vial of blood to have my genome sequenced, my search to understand my DNA led me to Mark Sanders, a former Indiana firefighter.
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I may get Alzheimer’s disease, I was told after getting my DNA analyzed. I could suffer the consequences of an abnormal blood clot in my heart or my brain.
The Ethical, Financial and Clinical Challenges of Genetic Testing
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Camilla Grondahl asked genetics researcher Gholson Lyon a simple, heartbreaking question: Was she carrying a lethal gene that might kill her unborn baby?
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When Matt Christman watches his kids play soccer every week, he harbors a nagging worry that one of them will suddenly collapse and die of a heart attack.
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Debbie McCarron was prepared to get both of her breasts taken off if a blood test in December 2006 revealed she carried a gene that vastly increases the risk of breast cancer.
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Genetic testing is becoming cheaper and more widespread, promising to usher in a revolution in cancer treatment. Yet, long-standing DNA tests are often overlooked.
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Sharing the benefits of DNA science across social and class lines is one of the next big challenges facing genome researchers, scientists said at a Nobel conference in Stockholm today.
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April Hauge, a nurse practitioner in Weimar, California, spent $500 on a genetic test for her autistic son in 2009 that led to purchasing thousands of dollars in vitamins and supplements.
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Tory Galloway thought her negative result on a widely-used test sold by Myriad Genetics Inc. (MYGN) cleared her DNA as a cause for her fallopian tube cancer.
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The Promise of Better Treatment
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Kristal James, a medical technician in suburban Dallas, spent more than a year fighting rapidly spreading breast cancer that looked like it might take her life.
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By the time his twins Noah and Alexis were 12 years old, Joe Beery and his wife Retta had spent a decade trying to figure out what made their children so ill.
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Chris Butters was changing a diaper for his son, Patrick, last November when he felt something in the two-month-old’s abdomen. It was about the size of a marble or a peanut M&M candy.
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