Natalie Lampson
Science of Women’s Bodies
October 30, 2014
Genetic Testing
Technology is highly intertwined with our lives today. There is almost no part of our lives that doesn’t use technology in one manner or another. With this being true, it seems a natural step to include technology into our healthcare. Today there are many uses for genetic testing, and it is predicted that there will be many more uses as time goes on and science improves. But along with the positives of genetic testing, it is not without some controversy. There are many people that believe that genetic testing has gone too far and it messing with the natural order of life. Since the completion of the mapping of the human genome, the uses for genetic testing have vastly …show more content…
Beginning from the early days of Mendel’s pea plants, the study of genetics and heredity has changed from looking at the color of flowers to looking at a tiny part of one chromosome and figuring out what the abnormality is. The structure of DNA was first understood to be a helical shape in 1953. From 1953 to 1977, the advancements were astounding. It was only in 1977 that Frederick Sanger and Walter Gilbert first discovered a way to sequence DNA (Zimmern 1999). In 1990, with the support of the National Academy of Sciences, the Human genome project was started. This was an effort to map out the complete human genome, or map all of the genes in the human body (Collins 2001). They idea was to be able to recognize a disease and be able to tell where the gene abnormality was in the human genome. The complete mapping of the human genome was completed in 2003.
Continuing with the work completed by the Human Genome Project in 2003, geneticists are now able to use genetic testing to match a genetic disorder with a specific location on a specific gene. There are seven main types of genetic tests that are used today. There is newborn screening, prenatal testing, carrier screening, pre-implantation testing, predictive testing, diagnostic testing and forensic testing. Each of these has a specific purpose and
Science of Women’s Bodies
October 30, 2014
Genetic Testing
Technology is highly intertwined with our lives today. There is almost no part of our lives that doesn’t use technology in one manner or another. With this being true, it seems a natural step to include technology into our healthcare. Today there are many uses for genetic testing, and it is predicted that there will be many more uses as time goes on and science improves. But along with the positives of genetic testing, it is not without some controversy. There are many people that believe that genetic testing has gone too far and it messing with the natural order of life. Since the completion of the mapping of the human genome, the uses for genetic testing have vastly …show more content…
Beginning from the early days of Mendel’s pea plants, the study of genetics and heredity has changed from looking at the color of flowers to looking at a tiny part of one chromosome and figuring out what the abnormality is. The structure of DNA was first understood to be a helical shape in 1953. From 1953 to 1977, the advancements were astounding. It was only in 1977 that Frederick Sanger and Walter Gilbert first discovered a way to sequence DNA (Zimmern 1999). In 1990, with the support of the National Academy of Sciences, the Human genome project was started. This was an effort to map out the complete human genome, or map all of the genes in the human body (Collins 2001). They idea was to be able to recognize a disease and be able to tell where the gene abnormality was in the human genome. The complete mapping of the human genome was completed in 2003.
Continuing with the work completed by the Human Genome Project in 2003, geneticists are now able to use genetic testing to match a genetic disorder with a specific location on a specific gene. There are seven main types of genetic tests that are used today. There is newborn screening, prenatal testing, carrier screening, pre-implantation testing, predictive testing, diagnostic testing and forensic testing. Each of these has a specific purpose and