Question: What are the benefits of genomic testing? What things can genomic testing identify?

Ditte Hedegaard answered on 27 Jun 2014:

Hi 11pghala

There is a lot of benefits of genetic testing, it can tell us how likely we or unborn babies are to get a specific disease such as breast cancer, cystic fibrosis (a disease where the patient produce too much slim in the lungs), down syndrom, hemophilia and a lot of other diseases. Once the doctors know they can then provide the right care for the patient. The actress Angelia Jolie recently had genetic testing done for breast cancer. Unfortunately, the test showed that she had the genetic code for potentially developing breast cancer and have a 87% risk of developing this type of cancer later in life. She therefore decided to have both of her breasts surgical removed to minimise the risk.

Not all people want to be genetically tester either because they want to live with the fear of something that might never happen or they don’t want to know because if they have the genes that encode for a disease then they will feel responsible for passing that gene on to their children and potentially make them ill. It is important to point out that even if the doctors or scientist find the genetic code for a disease in the patient, it does not mean that the patient will definitely get the disease. Our life styles and environment may play a role as well for some of the disease, especially for cancer.