How DNA Testing Could ‘Save’ You

You have probably read that DNA testing can have life transforming effects, but are you aware that DNA testing can ‘save’ you? Yes, DNA testing can save you both financially and physically.

Let’s take a situation where DNA testing can save you financially. Suppose you are a man, and a girlfriend you have been having a casual relationship with calls with the news that she has just been to the doctor’s, and that she is expecting your baby. Ordinarily, this would be source of great joy – only that in this case you are not so sure whether you are the only man in her life. And you are not sure, either, why out of the many men in her life you would be one lucky enough to ‘score’ as far as fathering the baby is concerned. What you are sure though is the great financial responsibility it is bringing up a kid – right from maternity delivery costs, through childhood and teenage to the day they clear college and stand up on their own. This is a situation in which many men are increasingly finding themselves in, and DNA testing can help them clear the air on whether the baby in question is indeed theirs, or whether they are being taken for a ride, being asked to help bring up another man’s child. And if it turns out that the baby in question is not yours, then obviously you have no financial obligation to support the baby financially – unless you choose to do so out of philanthropy. If you choose not to take financial responsibility for bringing up the baby (who is not biologically yours), you have in effect been saved by DNA testing from a great financial obligation that would have in all probability run into huge sums of money and into at least two decades. And to save yourself from all this, all that you would have done is get a DNA sample from the baby once it is born (A DNA sample is usually easily gotten through a painless inner cheek swab), get a DNA sample from yourself through a similar process, and send the samples to a DNA lab, usually alongside a small fee as DNA tests have become really cheap.

Physically speaking, as scientists conduct ever advanced DNA research, information is growing on which particular genes seem to be responsible for particular diseases. Much of this information has been brought to public domain. And what has been established beyond reasonable room for doubt is that in most cases people do not inherit diseases through their DNA. What they inherit is predisposition to various diseases, a predisposition which materializes into a disease if a certain triggers for the disease get activated in one’s life. As DNA tests get more and more affordable then, many people are taking them to figure out which genetic diseases they are predisposed to – so that they can take steps to avoid exposing themselves to the triggers for the same diseases. By taking a DNA test yourself, you can learn which genetic diseases you are predisposed to, and take steps to avoid the triggers of that disease. This way, DNA testing would have saved you from a potential physical ailment.