Transforming our future by unlocking the power of DNA: the representation of health-related genomic testing in UK news items

www.nature.com/ejhg ARTICLE OPEN Transforming our future by unlocking the power of DNA: the representation of health-related genomic testing in UK news items Rachel Horton 1,2,3 ✉ , Kendra Gordillo 4 , Anneke Lucassen 1,2 and Susie Weller 1,2 1234567890();,: © The Author(s) 2026 Many people will have had no formal education on health-related genomic testing, so information from media sources may constitute a major influence in shaping ideas and expectations around genomic tests. We undertook a framing analysis of 186 UK news items discussing health-related genomic testing in the context of various recent UK-based initiatives: the 100,000 Genomes Project; Our Future Health; the Generation Study; the Deciphering Developmental Disorders Study; and the NHS Genomic Medicine Service. We found that news items tended to frame genomic tests as the fruit of amazing technological progress. Tests were frequently described as ‘reading’ the genetic code and in the context of newborn screening, diagnosis and prediction were often treated as almost synonymous. Genomics was positioned as standing to give us all a healthier future. A decision to contribute genomic data to a research database was typically framed as virtuous, though some items discussed privacy concerns in depth. A clear diagnosis was achieved in 88% of instances where diagnostic genomic testing of a specific symptomatic person was discussed, with little attention afforded to those who had experienced less impressive outcomes. In summary, UK news items tended to celebrate the very best of genomic testing, but in doing so, they potentially engender an expectation that dramatically beneficial results come as standard. Providers of genomic tests need to be mindful of the backdrop of promotional media discourse when patients are making decisions around testing and ensure that consent conversations help patients anticipate potential limitations and challenges as well as benefits. European Journal of Human Genetics; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41431-026-02140-8 INTRODUCTION Genomic technology is playing an increasing role in healthcare. When used in diagnosing symptomatic rare disease, for the ~40% of people where it succeeds, this is often very useful. A diagnosis might allow more tailored clinical care, perhaps by informing prognosis or opening up new treatment options. It may have value in providing an explanation for a person’s health problems, or in clarifying reproductive options for their family [1]. Understandably, for some of the ~60% where diagnosis is not achieved, this may be experienced as a significant loss [2]. Recently, there has been considerable focus on the potential role genomics might play in the setting of population screening, for example, predicting rare disease in the newborn period [3], or susceptibility to a range of common diseases in adult life [4]. In a rare disease screening context, prior probabilities are very different from the investigation of existing, overt rare disease. Picking out which genomic variations might actually lead to disease is a very difficult task, as illustrated by studies delineating the range of seemingly abnormal variation in every ‘normal’ genome [5, 6]. In a common disease screening context, the small relative contribution of the genetic factors measured to overall risk means ‘high risk’ genetic results often have only slight impacts on absolute risk [7]. Yet despite its increasing importance and the subtleties associated with its interpretation in different contexts, many adults will not have had any formal education around the use of genomics in healthcare. Nevertheless, a recent international scoping review exploring the public’s knowledge of, attitude to and motivation towards health-related genomics indicated ‘general positivity about genomics, with high awareness but little familiarity or factual knowledge. Publics had high expectations of genomics and perceived that it could provide them with information for their future’ [8]. Where does this high awareness and general positivity come from? One potential source is media coverage of clinical genomics– Happer and Philo argue that ‘The media play a central role in informing the public about what happens in the world, particularly in those areas in which audiences do not possess direct knowledge or experience’ [9]. However, while most people accept that the media can influence us, there is much debate as to how and to what extent [10]. Condit’s work explores the complexity of people’s attitudes and shows that people strategically tap into different explanatory models depending on context. She reflects that ‘Unqualified, direct sentences are quicker and easier to produce than qualified, 1 Clinical Ethics, Law and Society group, Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. 2Centre for Personalised Medicine, Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. 3Wessex Clinical Genetics Service, Princess Anne Hospital, Southampton, UK. 4Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, NL, Netherlands. ✉email: Received: 6 January 2026 Revised: 9 April 2026 Accepted: 5 May 2026 R. Horton et al. 2 Table 1. Sources searched for news stories. News source URL used for search Political orientation BBC News Bbc.co.uk/news Neutral Style Broadcast/online Sky News News.sky.com Neutral Broadcast/online The Sun Thesun.co.uk Right of centre Tabloid/online The Guardian and Observera Theguardian.com Left of centre Broadsheet/online Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday Dailymail.co.uk Right of centre Midmarket/online The Times and The Sunday Times Thetimes.com Right of centre Broadsheet/online The Mirror and The Sunday Mirror Mirror.co.uk Left of centre Tabloid/online a At the point the searches discussed in this article were undertaken, the Observer was owned by Guardian News and Media Ltd and operated as a sister paper to the Guardian. Ownership transferred to Tortoise Media in April 2025 (https://www.theguardian.com/info/2025/apr/07/observer-faqs). multicausal sentences’ [11]. She illustrates that people might use a genetic essentialist explanatory model sometimes, yet in other contexts, draw on a different account, for example, highlighting the role of environmental factors [11]. This reminds us that the content of UK news items cannot be taken as a simple proxy for the attitudes of either writers or readers. However, we argue that the portrayal of clinical genomics in these news items still has the potential to influence people’s expectations and, as such, merits examination. The 2023 Ofcom report on news consumption in the UK noted that 96% of UK adults say they consume news in some form, with 68% consuming news via online sources [12]. So how have genomic tests and their results been framed in UK news? METHODS Collecting news items We used Google search1 to identify items from the BBC News and Sky News websites, together with five UK national newspaper titles. These sources were (...truncated)