Genetic Testing

Genetic testing includes prenatal and clinical diagnosis or prognosis of fetal abnormalities, predicting risk of disease, and identifying carriers of genetic disorders. Genetic testing is distinguished from genetic screening, which is offered to healthy people who might benefit from more information about their genetic risk profile. In this context, the initiative for a genetic test comes from the healthcare professional and not from the counselee. Learning about the perceptions of genetic risks and the way people make decisions with regard to these risks is becoming increasingly relevant, given the rapidly growing knowledge about the human genome. Recent developments in molecular genetics have led to speculations that we are moving into a new era of predictive medicine in which it will be possible to test for ...