Universal genetic testing may cause the break up of some families.
What became clear to me at a recent meeting I attended is that most everyone is going to have his or her DNA read in the near future. Another thing that became obvious is that scientists aren’t doing enough thinking about what impact this will have on society.
Here’s a seemingly trivial example. In most scenarios I have seen, children‘s DNA is read as soon as they are born. This will definitely have some huge health benefits especially as we learn more and more about how our DNA works and what it means. But this will also have some big unintended consequences too.
Parents will know both their kids’ and their own DNA. From that it will be pretty easy for most anyone to piece together whether or not a child is related to them. In other words, if everyone knows their family’s DNA, then every family will automatically undergo a paternity test. And if some statistics I have seen are true, then a whole lot of people are in for a nasty surprise.
The most recent numbers that I have seen are that something like 3-4% of fathers are unknowingly raising kids who are not their own*. Universal DNA testing will undoubtedly spill the beans in these cases causing many families to break apart.