Company Pushes Genetic Testing On Parents For Range Of Conditions

For years, genetically testing eggs and sperm to determine what traits a child would inherit was the stuff of science fiction. Now, rapidly changing technology allows limited testing but a company claims that it can test for up to 1,000 genetic variations that could lead to health risk for children. However, at $2000 per test this is far from cheap and the benefits that it offers are debatable as the exact cause of many genetic diseases is still poorly understood.

In any event, genetic testing will have an impact on estate planning going into the future as parents decide how to treat children for inheritance purposes based on genetics rather than other, traditional metrics. For example, a couple with two children, of which one child has the genetic markers for potentially developing severe health problems later in life, may favor the potentially sick child in a will due to the perceived future need for money. While this is not yet an issue that will have to be dealt with, the future will likely make it a big player and it’s never too early to think about how future testators will decide who takes what after death.

See Azeen Ghorayshi, This Company Is Trying To Make More Perfect Babies, Buzz Feed, July 12, 2015.

Special thanks to Naomi Cahn (Harold H. Greene Professor of Law, George Washington University School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.