(Alas, no Syfy on Russian basic cable, just hilarious stories about how the aliens are in cahoots with the Illuminati.)

In reality, I can’t see how the study of genetics could really alarm anybody. We’ve been living, for all of human existance, with fallout from genetic diseases, so just being able to explain them should if anything make it all less alarming. On the other hand, I would make a lousy journalist.

Most casual readers will probably imagine that she was denied health insurance, something which is illegal under Genetic Nondiscrimination Act, GINA … because it’s everyone’s fear in the US, loosing health insurance benefits. Long-term care policies (far less important for most of the Americans but still very important for people with poor health prognosis) aren’t covered by GINA, and people are routinely advised to purchase the long term and/or life policies before doing any genetic testing, just in case.

But most of the scary things about genetic testing I’m aware of don’t come anywhere close to discrimination or progeny design. They stem from poor interpretation of the results, and from our miserable ability to understand probability and statistics.