“Most direct-to-consumer genetic testing services still require that patients be at least 18 years old. But there are workarounds. The popular at-home DNA test 23andMe requires that users be 18, but parents can order $199 kits for their offspring and send back their saliva through the mail, according to spokesman Andy Kill. (Kill says the company doesn't have statistics on how many children’s samples it has received.) And in April, the FDA ruled that 23andMe could release reports about patients’ risks for diseases, including Parkinson’s and late-onset Alzheimer’s diseases.

As testing children for genetic diseases becomes available to more parents, it is raising difficult ethical questions. For instance: Would the knowledge that your kid might get sick someday make you treat them differently? “There’s a concern that parents might connect to kids in a different way if they knew something negative about their future,” says Laventhal. Perhaps you'd be proactive by pushing your daughters to freeze their eggs at a young age, if you knew they were at risk for cancers and might undergo cancer treatments that could hurt their fertility.

“You’re going to create a lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety and make parents crazy,” adds Dr. Lainie Friedman Ross, who researches genetic testing policy at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago. “





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