In recent years, personalized medicine has become increasingly prevalent, largely due to advances in medical science. While this trend offers several advantages, such as the detection of diseases and promoting healthy lifestyle habits. It also comes with noticeable disadvantages like stress or anxiety and inequality in health care.
One of the significant advantages of genetic tests is early detection of diseases. If Individuals know the hereditary patterns, they can follow individualised plans or medicine that helps to reduce the chances of that disease. Prevention is better than cure. Moreover, it encourages a healthy lifestyle among people. It helps people to change their lifestyle and diet patterns that provide long-term benefits. For example, It is often seen that people who get to know the chances of certain diseases change their lifestyle and adopt healthy methods like yoga and eating pesticide-free food this reduces the chances of certain diseases.
Despite these benefits, there are also certain drawbacks that cannot be overlooked. One major disadvantage is stress. Some people feel disturbed and have anxiety issues when they get to know their chances of particular diseases. Instead of taking action, citizens start panicking. This increases their chances of having a particular disease because subconsciously, they are preparing their mind for negative circumstances. In addition, genetic tests are usually expensive; each test costs about 400-500 dollars, and not everyone has access to it. This widens the gap between health care and inequality. For instance, most of the clients who performs this test are rich people like celebrities and sportsmen. People who belong to the middle class usually hesitate to perform this test because of a lack of funds.
In conclusion, although DNA test provides several clear advantages such as detection and prevention of disease, it also comes with certain drawbacks including stress and highly expensive.