Citing rising Jewish intermarriage rates, the leading
organization devoted to combating Tay-Sachs is urging doctors to
encourage the use of more comprehensive testing methodology to
identify carriers of the deadly genetic disease. The National
Tay-Sachs & Allied Diseases Association issued its position
statement on Tay-Sachs carrier screening in September 2009. The
statement stressed the importance of using enzyme testing to
discover whether individuals are Tay-Sachs carriers, rather than
relying solely on DNA testing, which it warned is becoming “less
sensitive” as “the Ashkenazi Jewish population becomes less
homogeneous.” In the 1970s, when the first Tay-Sachs screening
programs were set up, the only carrier-detection method was
enzyme testing, which uses a blood sample to look for the low
levels of Hexosaminidase A enzyme that suggest someone is a Tay-
Sachs carrier. In recent years, however, DNA testing has enabled
screening for a battery of Jewish genetic diseases all at once
via a saliva or buccal sampl