The practice of genome mapping expanded the scientific knowledge for understanding genetic disorders like Huntington Disease. Testing of these diseases has both advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage that is associated with genetic testing for the Disease of Huntington is limited to the advantage of knowledge over ignorance (Garcia, Marder and Wang, 2017) . Through undergoing the test of this disease, individuals get to know the likelihood of developing the disease over a certain period. In essence, if a child does not inherit the disease, there will not be any tendency to acquire it and pass it on to the subsequent generations.
Testing is important because, through the knowledge about the disease, people can make informed decisions on risking passing on the risk to the next generation. Also, early diagnosis will be important for early treatment of the symptoms of the disease (Godinho et al., 2015) On the other hand, the process of testing for the Huntington disease has great disadvantages in that it will create psychological stress of bearing the knowledge about living with the disease.
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Through the history, when insurance companies know the presence of the condition in one’s genes, it will open up grounds for refusing to offer coverage to the disease. However, there has been some relief after the passing of the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” which allows individuals with pre-existing conditions to gain access to insurance coverage. That plan has however gone through great challenges of implementation because of the problems of funding. Therefore, patients face a lot of difficulties in the new law that was meant to help them. If there is full implementation of the law and positive individuals can enjoy healthcare cover, the disadvantage of testing will only be psychological.
References
Garcia, T. P., Marder, K., & Wang, Y. (2017). Statistical modeling of Huntington disease onset. In Handbook of clinical neurology (Vol. 144, pp. 47-61). Elsevier.
Godinho, B. M., Malhotra, M., O’Driscoll, C. M., & Cryan, J. F. (2015). Delivering a disease-modifying treatment for Huntington's disease. Drug discovery today , 20 (1), 50-64.
