Going beyond cremation and visitations, Shaler funeral home offers DNA banking

When his father passed away in October, Andrew Weckman received an intriguing offer from the funeral director handling the arrangements.

The owner of Perman Funeral Home in Shaler suggested that Mr. Weckman harvest and store his deceased fathers DNA. That way the sample could be analyzed in future years as the mysteries of human genes continue to be uncovered.

My father was adopted, said Mr. Weckman, 26.So we didnt know too much about his background, medical history or hereditary information. My wife and I would like to know for our own benefit, and our unborn children, if there are any kind of hereditary diseases or anything we should be aware of.

For an industry that has seen dramatic changes in the spending patterns and preferences of its clients in recent years, DNA banking offers both a potential new stream of revenue for funeral homes and another service they can offer families to cope with their loss.

Perman Funeral Home is the first funeral home in Pennsylvania to offer DNA banking througha partnership with the Ontario, Canada, company, DNA Memorial, which provides collection services and products. DNA Memorial has a patent pending on the process of attaching DNA to inert material to prevent it from deteriorating over time.

Brad Marsh, a manager at DNA Memorial, said the technology has been around for seven or eight years. It was developed by the companys founder, Ryan Lehto, while he was a masters student at Lakehead University in Thunderbay, Ontario, and was doing research on the retrieval of ancient DNA from mummies and ancient life forms.

The company only began making traction in the funeral industry in the past year when Jeff Harbeson, a former funeral director, became president of DNA Memorial and began using his connections with funeral directors to market the product. So far, about 30 funeral homes in and around southern Ontario offer the DNA service. In the U.S., there are now about 20 funeral homes that provide DNA banking through the company.

We believe this will catch on because we are living in the age of genetics, and DNA is the ultimate in family history for medicine, Mr. Marsh said.DNA is being used for many medical and genealogical purposes and this will only increase as genetics expands.

DNA is a human genetic record that provides medical and genealogical information that has proven invaluable for a myriad of reasons. It can be used to diagnose medical conditions, calculate inherited risks for children, determine medical tests and medical dosage, and determine disease risk and preventative measures.

Likewise, it can play an important role in learning more about family ancestors, examining biological and geographical relationships between two individuals, finding relatives or adoptees, and learning from which relative certain traits were inherited.

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Going beyond cremation and visitations, Shaler funeral home offers DNA banking