What is believed to be the first healthy, U.S. baby to have his DNA sequenced prenatally was born this summer, according to MIT Technology Review. (A handful of fetuses have been sequenced as part of investigation of abnormalities.) The child’s father, a graduate student and professional genetics blogger who did the sequencing for the sake of coolness and not medicine, believes sequencing of fetuses will become routine practice. Will prenatal sequencing become the norm? Not likely any time soon, according to experts DTET spoke to. However, sequencing is being discussed as an alternate technology for newborn screening (NBS) tests. Yet employment of the technology for NBS is fraught with ethical considerations, and some believe the notion of sequencing newborns challenges the very intention of NBS—to identify potentially lethal or life-changing conditions that have effective treatments if detected early. The best interest of the child has been the driver of NBS decisions and has been the focus of early attention on the use of genetic testing in children. Generally, professional societies do not support the systematic genotyping of newborns or young children. The problem, of course, is too much information including identification of conditions that don’t manifest until adulthood or genetic […]