Sam Wood, PHILLY.COM Posted: Wednesday, March 6, 2013, 6:00 AM

There's a genetic testing revolution underway at your local hospital. And it's causing doctors and medical students to confront some very thorny issues.

"Personalized medicine" uses genetic information derived from tests to predict a patient's chances of coming down with diseases and offers ways of tailoring some cures.

Could testing on a fetus show that the person has the potential to be autistic? Gay? If so, what will parents do with the information?

A product of a $30 billion effort to sequence the human genome, the tests until recently have been limited to those wealthy enough to pay up to $10,000. But the tests have dropped to about $1,000.

Dr. Art Caplan, a professor of medical ethics at New York University, brought a host of provocative questions raised by the tests and their use in new treatments to Cooper University Medical School in Camden on Tuesday.

The inaugural speaker of the Berkowitz Family Foundation Lecture, Caplan dismissed most of the consumer-targeted versions of the genetic tests - those that claim to match diet and lifestyle to personal DNA - as "ethically worrisome" and "nonsense added to ridiculousness." Others, including 23andMe and DeCodeMe, are "more legitimate," he said.

Caplan, gregarious with a white mop of hair, also spoke about the developing field of pharmacogenomics, the study of prescribing drugs for patients based on their personal DNA.

"It's great, but it's still the early days," Caplan said.

Prenatal testing will drive most of the upcoming controversy, Caplan said.

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Promise and perils of ‘personalized’ medicine

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