Two physicians offer commentaries about the use of prenatal predictive testing for a late-onset disease like Huntington's and question whether the pregnant woman should ultimately have the decisional autonomy to determine the quality of life of the unborn child.
Physicians working in correctional systems face many ethical dilemmas and professional challenges in providing health care for incarcerated adolescents.
Rachel A. Mills, MS, Susanne B. Haga, PhD, and Geoffrey S. Ginsburg, MD, PhD
Clinical utility is a test’s contribution to health outcomes, while personal utility considers the psychosocial and lifestyle effects and the value of the information to the patient.
Developing technologies for personalized medicine may be misused to popularize the idea that one can infer a person’s genetic makeup from observer-defined or self-reported assignment to a race or ethnic group.
Chromosomal microarray analysis reveals many gene variants of unknown significance. The uncertainty about these variants—might they be deleterious or are they benign?—complicates genetic counseling.
Ruth M. Farrell, MD, MA, Holly Pederson, MD, and Shilpa Padia, MD
Though they claim to, direct-to-consumer genetic tests may not correctly identify an individual's ancestral background, and thus may overstate or understate one's risk for heritable disease.