This week you'll find a short piece in NEJM, a story written by a physician on how detecting a genetic p53 mutation changed her views. Key message:
Genetic knowledge is power only if both clinician and patient are equipped to move beyond a result and toward action, even if that merely means living well with what we know. I believe we need an expanded definition of genetic counseling; we require more data, yes, but also more sophisticated and sensitive ways of assimilating such data. And not just into databases we can mine to see what happens to people like me, but into programs for learning to live with uncertainty.
