Secondly, how long before insurance companies INSIST on such tests before giving cover?

I’m so glad things worked out for you, and that you were able to guide your decision better. Is such testing always the right choice? That’s complex, too. I don’t know.

So, an off-topic suggestion: “My Life As A Chicken” by Ellen A. Kelley. =)

I come from a family with lots of Down’s Syndrome. Because of its prevalence within the family our strain is likely caused by Trisonomy 21, though I’m not aware of anyone in my family that has had a genetic test to prove it.

Because I am a healthy male it is more likely than not that I am not a silent carrier. At the same time the chance that I am a silent carrier is much much greater than the general population.

You don’t need to tell me that a Downs baby isn’t the end of the world. They’re my family – I know that and I love (and in some cases dislike) all my family in a very common way. But you can’t tell me it is inconsequential either – it matters a lot. There is a significant burden on both parent and child, and yet its who we are – and we’re still proud people.

With all of this in my head I just put off considering having children until I was 35. I wasn’t saying “no” – I was just putting it off – not sure what to make of it.

Well, the clock ticks (as my wife reminded me). So I decided to get a genetic test. It wasn’t the one Dan mentioned here – but it was a simple blood test that was sent to genzyme for processing. I believe the cost was $800 (which is simultaneously absurdly expensive and absurdly cheap when you realize they can do genetic analysis for the cost of 2 weeks of rent!), but it was covered by insurance “due to my family history”.

The test was negative. A couple years later and we have a gorgeous, healthy, baby girl that is the pride of our life. Would we have gone on and risked a gorgeous downs baby that would have been the pride of our life anyhow if the test was positive? I don’t know. I do often wonder.

We certainly would not have terminated an in-utero pregnancy – Downs is a condition worth living with – my personal experience tells me that without question. But, in fact, I was already deciding not to try for a child based on my family history and the test allowed me to go ahead with an easier decision.

I’m grateful for it.

Oh really? I *dare* you to make a case that we, as a society, are better off now that we, as a society, are DROWNING in information. Compared to the pre-internet age.

Personally, I don’t think we such be entitled to “as much information as possible”. We should be entitled to, for lack of a better way of putting it, “the truth”. Heaping tons of info on our brains does not make it easier to get “the truth”, it just makes it harder.

Disclosure laws are meaningless when you don’t have the ethical, moral and intellectual basis to understand what’s being disclosed…and those doing the disclosing have learned how to make it impossible for anyone without years of free time and a Ph.D. to obtain that ethical, moral and intellectual basis.

Think I’m joking? It’s been a serious area of study (well, sort of) for several years now.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15534009/
http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/is-the-gop-in-your-dna-168

Perhaps more importantly, people may scoff at such an idea but there’s definitely a subset of very serious people with substantial financial backing who are quite determined to find if there’s any genetic component to political affiliation. In other words, there’s so much at stake that odds are good that someone will, sooner or later, figure it out.

The best part about this is, of course, that society is nowhere near ready to deal with the ethical implications of this. So it just increases the odds that it’ll rip the fabric of our society to shreds. Since I support the “Fight Club” approach to sociology, I’m all for that!

P.S. How will we know when the rip starts? Watch for the first state to mandate that all members of a given subset of prisoners get tested.

To start messing with this is indeed the stuff of frightening science fiction.