The following is an excerpt.
On Thursday [21 March 2013], the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics recommended that doctors tell patients about certain genetic disease risks if they accidentally find them when exploring a patient’s genome for another reason. However, the group does not recommend that doctors tell patients about all incidental findings.
The issue concerns many medical geneticists and other clinicians who use genome data in their practice. When a patient gets genetic testing to hunt for an explanation for heart trouble, should a doctor tell that patient if he or she sees a predisposition for breast cancer or early onset Alzheimer’s disease?
View the original article here: Doctors Should Tell Patients About Some, But Not All, Unexpected Genetic Findings
