ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Genetic testing in health care practices (adapted from an empirical study)

Bogomiagkova ES
About authors

Saint-Petersburg State University, Saint-Petersburg, Russia

Correspondence should be addressed: Elena S. Bogomiagkova
Universitetskaya nab., 7–9, Saint-Petersburg, 199034, Russia; ur.ubps@avokgaymogob.e

About paper

Financing: the article was prepared with support from the Russian Fund of Fundamental Research (RFFR), project No. 20–013–00770А.

Compliance with ethical standards: during the study, the general ethical principles were followed such as ensuring confidentiality and anonymity of participants, obtaining informed consent.

Received: 2022-04-24 Accepted: 2022-05-25 Published online: 2022-06-30
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The article contains the results obtained during an empirical study of health care practices among people of a large Russian city implemented in a combined strategy in 2020–2021. Our focus remains on the reference of citizens to the procedure of DNA diagnostics as a novel instrument of health-saving behavior and attitude to genetic knowledge in general. The obtained data allow concluding that genetic testing is not widely popular among population today, as only 9,5% of those interviewed have ever done it. DNA diagnostics is more frequently used by young women and men with high income and don’t trusting modern medicine, which probably reflects the actual condition of the market of genetic services in our country. Apart from financial possibilities, involvement into consumer genomics is influenced by insufficient trust in DNA information, and suspecting that players on the market of genetic services obtain economic profit. However, the most important argument against it consists in the discovered discrepancy between perception of genetic data as something inevitable and currently popular ideology of healthy lifestyle, meaning that a person can influence the outcome of the efforts made. As a result, research participants are not willing to become the everlasting ‘patients-in-waiting’ even in case of existing symptoms, but implement their ‘right not to know’. Under these conditions, an important task includes organization of active promoting awareness that unlocks potential, capabilities and limitations of genetic diagnostics.

Keywords: genetic testing, health care, telephone survey, semi-structured interviews, patient-in-waiting, social attitudes

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