Direct-to-Consumer DNA Testing is a Disruptive Technology

Disruptive technologies are innovations that significantly alter the way that consumers, industries or businesses operate. Though individual examples are, by definition, new, there is nothing new about the phenomenon itself. In fact, the history of human progress is a story of one disruptive technology after another, going all the way to the first time humans used fire to good food or used a wheel to move something. More contemporary examples would be the smartphone, Netflix, digital music, Airbnb, and Uber. Each of these developments disrupted earlier versions of technologies and the way consumers and businesses interact with them.
Direct to Consumer (DTC) DNA testing is such a development. It eliminates the expectation that conception will always exist behind an opaque veil of secrecy. This has significant implications, not just in the realm of family dynamics, where a pregnancy resulting from an affair can no longer be expected to remain a secret, but also in the Donor Conception (DC) industry, Adoptions, and Medical Ethics. The contracts under which most sperm donors and recipients are guaranteed anonymity are effectively unenforcible. Though closed adoptions are mostly a thing of the past, DTC DNA testing all but eliminates the practice. Current medical ethics require nondisclosure if a case of misattributed paternity is discovered, for example, in the case of a family testing for the viability of family members for an organ transplant. The existence of DTS DNA testing means that such nondisclosure could be exposed with a simple home test, raising the specter of a breech of trust with ones medical providers.

This is a novel technology. It is still very much in the early stages of disruption. It will be fascinating to see how in impact our world in the coming years.