The consequences aren't merely financial.
"I wouldn't have had an abortion, but there are women out there who experience really big disappointment," said Jolene Sodano, a stay-at-home mother in Nazareth, Pa., whose daughter was mistakenly identified as a boy. "They really want to give their husbands the little boy they want, or a little girl, and they will abort based on these results."
More than 100 women have filed a lawsuit against Acu-Gen and its owner, Chang-ning Wang, that is pending in federal court. At least one customer has been questioned by the FBI. Wang has repeatedly declined to discuss the scientific validity of the test.
"It made me very angry at myself for believing this gibberish," said Mandana Kouroshnia, a Redlands dentist who joined the suit after her test incorrectly predicted a boy. "I made a fool out of myself."
Ripe for exploitation
The rise of direct-to-consumer genetic tests has come with surprising speed after the decoding of the human genome in 2000. Today, about 1,400 different types are being sold to consumers.
In the past, virtually all testing was done in medical laboratories for diagnostic purposes, such as searching for the mutations in the BRCA1 gene that are related to breast cancer.
But the development of faster and cheaper machines to sequence specific genes quickly gave entrepreneurs an opportunity.
Any trivial genetic quirk can be ripe for exploitation. Consumer Genetics, for example, offers a $139 test called CaffeineGEN that screens for a DNA variant that causes caffeine to be metabolized slowly and is associated with an increased risk of miscarriages and nonfatal heart attacks. The company is also developing a test for a gene variant that might allow people to lower their cholesterol levels through moderate wine consumption.
Both tests are based on documented genetic aberrations, but there has been no proof that they can accurately predict health outcomes.
The gender tests got off to a splashy start in June 2005, when Acu-Gen's Baby Gender Mentor was featured on NBC's "Today" show. Holly Osburn, then seven weeks pregnant, went on the morning program to find out whether her third baby would be another girl or her first boy. On live TV, she appeared to force a smile after being told to expect a daughter.
The company's website said its $275 test was able to detect fetal genetic material as early as five weeks after conception with up to 99.9% accuracy.
