Tag: genomic sequencing

Dr. Fleck presents on public funding for whole genome sequencing at International Bioethics Retreat

Leonard Fleck photo

Dr. Leonard Fleck, professor in the Center for Ethics, participated in a keynote debate this month as part of the 24th annual International Bioethics Retreat that was presented virtually from Paris. Each year, “experts in medicine, philosophy, law, and health policy are invited from around the world to present their current research projects.”

Within the debate format, Dr. Fleck addressed the question: “Whole Genome Sequencing: Should It Be Publicly Funded?” Dr. Fleck defended the affirmative in this debate, while Dr. Leslie Francis of the University of Utah defended the negative. Continue reading below for Dr. Fleck’s summary of the debate.

Whole Genome Sequencing: Should It Be Publicly Funded?

Below are the key elements in the affirmative side of that debate, as well as acknowledgment of legitimate points made by Dr. Francis.

We can start with the question of what Whole Genome Sequencing [WGS] is. It refers to creating a complete map of all three billion base pairs of DNA in an individual. Next, how might WGS be used? It can be used for preventive, diagnostic, therapeutic, reproductive, and public health purposes? It can be used by adults as part of a preventive strategy, i.e., identifying genetic vulnerabilities to disorders that might be managed or prevented through behavioral change. WGS can be used diagnostically to correctly identify very rare disorders that otherwise will require a costly and painful diagnostic odyssey. This is most often true in the case of infants.

WGS is used therapeutically in the case of metastatic cancer. Both the patient and cancer tumors would be mapped in order to find a genetic driver of the cancer that could then be attacked with a targeted cancer therapy, such as trastuzumab to attack a HER2+ breast cancer. WGS can be used in a reproductive context to do non-invasive prenatal assessment of a fetus. Likewise, some advocate using WGS to do neonatal genetic screening in place of the heel stick and blood draw that will test for 56 childhood genetic disorders. WGS could test for hundreds of very rare genetic disorders that can affect children. The public health context is very visible right now as we do WGS of the COVID variants now emerging.

Why public funding? The key argument is that it is a matter of health care justice. WGS costs about $1000 for the sequencing itself, and another $2000 for the analysis, interpretation, and counseling. Insurers will generally not pay for WGS. Roughly, only the top quintile in the U.S. economic spectrum can afford to pay for WGS out of pocket. This can yield significant health advantages for them, most especially avoiding various sorts of genetic harms. More precisely, the relatively wealthy might learn of one or more health risks through WGS that would suggest the need for additional testing and therapeutic interventions, all of which would be paid for by their insurance. The less financially well off may have good health insurance but be unaware of the need to use it in a timely way without the advantage of WGS. One possible result is that a curable disease becomes incurable when symptoms are clinically evident. This is an injustice that can be avoided if access to WGS is publicly funded.

My esteemed debate partner Dr. Francis emphasized that the ethics issues are much more complex than simply matters of health care justice. The distinctive feature of any form of genetic testing is that it yields considerable information about any number of first-degree relatives who may or may not want an individual to know that information. If we do WGS on a neonate, for example, we might discover that neonate has an APOE 4/4 variant for early dementia. That means at least one parent has that vulnerability, which they might not wish to know. In addition, do those parents have any obligation to notify any other relatives of their potential vulnerability? What if, instead, it was a BRCA1 mutation for breast or ovarian cancer? More problematic still, what if WGS is used at public expense in prenatal screening with the result that some parents choose to have an abortion. Would advocates for a Right to Life view have a right to object to their tax dollars being used to facilitate access to a procedure to which they conscientiously object? This is why we have debates.

Bioethics for Breakfast: Biobanking Tissue: Trash or Treasure?

Bioethics for Breakfast Seminars in Medicine, Law and SocietyJennifer Carter-Johnson, PhD, JD, and Tom Tomlinson, PhD, presented at the Bioethics for Breakfast event on December 6, 2018, offering their perspectives and insight on the topic “Biobanking Tissue: Trash or Treasure?”

“Big data”—repositories of biological, medical and demographic information about large numbers of people—is a critical platform for discovery of the causes of disease and potential new avenues for its treatment.

This data must come from us, the general public. Data about you might end up in a biobank because you’ve generously agreed to provide it, perhaps by agreeing to join the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us project that aims to recruit a broad representative sample of one million Americans.

Or it might already have been provided for use in research without your knowledge or consent. Research using specimens and medical information collected during your clinical care, once de-identified, doesn’t count as research on a “human subject” under the Federal regulations. Thus, your consent is not required. This source probably provides the great majority of information used in big data research, and acquiring and distributing it has become a multimillion dollar business.

This practice raises a host of questions. Doesn’t my specimen and my medical information belong to me, rather than to the hospital or clinic that collects it? Or have I thrown it away like my trash sitting on the curb each week? Although many people may feel comfortable providing this information for research, others might not. So isn’t it a simple act of respect to ask first? Or are researchers simply the medical equivalent of college students dumpster diving for cheap furniture that has been thrown away? Additionally, if we ask, and too many people say “no,” won’t critical research be hampered, to the detriment of all of us?

Dr. Tomlinson asked attendees to consider this question: Should clinically-acquired specimens and other medical information be treated like the trash that you have no control of once it has left your curb?

Dr. Tomlinson referred to a national study that his research team conducted in 2014 regarding willingness to give blanket consent, focusing on the fact that people care about more than risk – they have concern about how their materials may be used, and they worry about how much they should trust the research establishment. Dr. Tomlinson’s overarching argument was that respect for persons, a fundamental bioethics principle, requires informed consent.

Dr. Carter-Johnson also offered a question: whose treasure is it? Biospecimens and related data can be donated by patients and the public, can be clinically collected de-identified materials, and they can be samples given to private companies like 23andMe or Ancestry.com. Dr. Carter-Johnson also discussed a new startup offering to sequence your genome for free, and highlighted the variety of health and fitness apps that we give our data too. “When something is free, you are the product,” she said. A show of hands revealed that a minority of the attendees had gotten their DNA sequenced.

Dr. Carter-Johnson offered a legal perspective on tissue and genetic data in relation to property and privacy rights. She explained that individuals do not own their own tissue, citing the cases Moore v. Regents of California and Greenberg v. Miami Children’s Hospital Research Institute. However, there have been exceptions, and there are legal ways to “sell” your body (think plasma, bone marrow, sperm, or clinical trials).

When discussing privacy, Dr. Carter-Johnson used 23andMe and Ancestry.com’s privacy policies as examples. These policies are contractual, they are updated frequently, and they are often ignored by the consumer. However, push from consumers as well as bioethicists have led to these policies being more available and accessible.

Audience discussion brought up the famous Henrietta Lacks case, the future of biobank donor policies, and newborn screening programs and biobanks.

Jennifer Carter-Johnson, PhD, JD
Jennifer Carter-Johnson is an Associate Professor of Law at the Michigan State University College of Law and holds both a JD and a PhD in Microbiology. Professor Carter-Johnson uses her interdisciplinary training to study the intersection of law and scientific research.

Tom Tomlinson, PhD
Tom Tomlinson was Director of the Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences from 2000 to 2018, and is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy. He chairs the Ethics Committee at Sparrow Health System, and has published widely on the ethics of biobank-based research.

About Bioethics for Breakfast:
In 2010, Hall, Render, Killian, Heath & Lyman invited the Center for Ethics to partner on a bioethics seminar series. The Center for Ethics and Hall Render invite guests from the health professions, religious and community organizations, political circles, and the academy to engage in lively discussions of topics spanning the worlds of bioethics, health law, business, and policy. For each event, the Center selects from a wide range of controversial issues and provides two presenters either from our own faculty or invited guests, who offer distinctive, and sometimes clashing, perspectives. Those brief presentations are followed by a moderated open discussion.

Welcome to FDA Enforcement

Bioethics-in-the-News-logoThis post is a part of our Bioethics in the News series. For more information, click here.

By Kayte Spector-Bagdady, J.D., M.Bioethics

 “This is me, my DNA. It helps make me who I am…I might have an increased risk of heart disease, arthritis, gallstones, hemochromatosis…hundreds of things about my health. Getting my 23andMe results, it really opened my eyes. The more you know about your DNA, the more you know about yourself. I do things a little differently now…”

On November 22, 2013, 23andMe (the leading direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing company), received a “Warning Letter” from FDA—a first for the DTC genetic testing industry. In this letter, FDA requested that 23andMe discontinue marketing its personal genome service until further authorization and end its TV campaign excerpted above (now the YouTube video is marked “private”). 23andMe’s official FDA response might not be public, but on December 5, 2013, 23andMe did announce publicly that it was going to stop selling new customers its DTC health-related genetic test. Unlike, for example, an X-ray, “DTC” tests are those available directly to purchasers, like a pregnancy test. While there are many benefits to having certain diagnostic tests available directly to consumers without a trained intermediary, there are also concerns about giving laypersons medical information without specific guidance from a healthcare practitioner.

This is not the DTC genetic testing industry’s first tango with the U.S. federal government. In 2006 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on nutrigenetic testing which found that companies were selling $1,200/year vitamins (actually worth $35/year in a local drug store) to “fix” DNA. In 2010 a GAO investigator was advised by an industry representative that her BRCA mutation, associated with an increased risk of breast cancer, meant that she was “in the high risk of pretty much getting” the disease (GAO did not reveal company identities for either of its reports).

In fact, just a few years ago, nearly thirty DTC companies offered 400 discrete genetic tests—until Pathway Genomics announced in 2010 that it was going to start offering its previously web-based product in Walgreens across the country. This got the attention of FDA, which eventually sent 23 “Untitled Letters” (for a violation not quite as significant as those triggering a “Warning Letter”) stating that these products were in fact medical devices and had to receive FDA clearance or approval. Soon thereafter many DTC genetic testing companies either altered their model by requiring a physician order or collapsed entirely—leaving 23andMe to dominate the industry.

In 2007, 23andMe offered thirteen health reports for $999. As of December 2, 2013, 23andMe offered over 250 health reports for $99—including reports regarding a higher risk for Alzheimer’s Disease to whether your cilantro will taste soapy—all in a colorful box promising “Welcome to you.”

As of today, for the same $99, 23andMe is selling an analysis of your ancestral origins and lineage  and “raw genetic data” “without 23andMe’s interpretation” but have suspended their health-related genetic information service “to comply with [FDA’s] directive to discontinue new consumer access during our regulatory review process.”

FDA’s jurisdiction hinges on whether the 23andMe’s product can appropriately be considered a medical device under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. There has been a lot of interesting debate in the tweetisblogosphere regarding whether 23andMe is marketing their test as their terms of service state, for “research and educational use only,” or, as the TV adds promised, to tell you “hundreds of things about your health” so you can do things “a little differently.” But another possible consequence of 23andMe canceling their health analysis is the unintended encouragement of a new DTC genetic industry—one providing genetic medical information only.

Last year, Gene By Gene started the trend by offering consumers genomic sequencing only: a raw data file of As, Ts, Cs, and Gs without any interpretation. Think this. But, for the majority of consumers, raw sequence data services require a parallel offering of interpretation-only services to provide a marketable product.

FDA has stated that it’s not interested in regulating raw genomic data as a medical device, but entities that provide genomic interpretation (see, e.g., openSNP) can reveal more sensitive medical information about an individual’s propensity to develop disease and pharmacogenomic information about the efficacy of particular drugs given a particular genetic makeup—which places these services squarely within FDA’s area of interest. 23andMe has always offered customers their raw data as part of its package, but it’s the genetic risk and drug responses (i.e., analyzed information) that FDA cited as concerning in its letter.

But just as FDA begins to seriously grapple with the DTC genetic testing industry, open-source, web-based platforms that interpret genomic data free of charge are going to pose further challenges to the limits of FDA’s ability to regulate (potentially non-commercial) speech, and effectively utilize enforcement mechanisms made for tangible money-making products on information and open-sourced platforms.

The interpretation of FDA’s Warning Letter may be clear, but the future of DTC genetic testing might instead lie in how you interpret the letters “A, T, C, and G.”

(Still interested? Read more on the topic from me and my co-author Lizzy Pike here).

References:

Letter from Alberto Gutierrez, Dir., Office of In vitro Diagnostics and Radiological Health, Ctr. for Devices & Radiological Health, Food & Drug Admin., U.S. Dep’t of Health & Human Services, to Ann[e] Wojcicki, C.E.O., 23andMe, Inc. (Nov. 22, 2013).

U.S. Gov’t Accountability Office, GAO-06-977T, Nutrigenic Testing: Tests Purchased from Four Web Sites Misled Consumers, Testimony Before the S. Special Comm. on Aging (July 27, 2006).

U.S. Gov’t Accountability Office, Highlights of GAO-10-847T, Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Tests: Misleading Results are Further Complicated by Deceptive Marketing and Other Questionable Practices (July 22, 2010).

kayte-spector-bagdadyKayte Spector-Bagdady, J.D., M.Bioethics, is Associate Director at the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues where she managed the Commission’s reports on Privacy and Progress in Whole Genome Sequencing and Anticipate and Communicate: Ethical Management of Incidental and Secondary Findings in the Clinical, Research, and Direct-to-Consumer Contexts.*

Join the discussion! Your comments and responses to this commentary are welcomed. The author will not, unfortunately be able to respond to all comments, but will read input with interest. With your participation, we hope to create discussions rich with insights from diverse perspectives. You must provide your name and email address to leave a comment. Your email address will not be made public.

* The findings and conclusions in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues or the Department of Health and Human Services. Use of official trade names does not mean or imply official support or endorsement by the author.