Subject: Efforts to Predict Genetic Ills Pose Medical Dilemmas
Date: Published: 9/14/87 45 lines
Source:  WALL STREET JOURNAL. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

   Price of Progress:  Efforts to Predict
   Genetic Ills Pose Medical Dilemmas
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   By Alan L. Otten
   Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

   With impressive regularity, science is finding ways to
identify apparently healthy individuals who are likely to
develop a deadly or debilitating hereditary disease or to
pass it on to their offspring.
   Unfortunately, science's ability to spot these diseases is
outstripping by many years its ability to do very much to
prevent or treat them.  This lag is creating complex medical,
legal and moral dilemmas involving family relationships,
confidentiality of medical data, proper counseling and much
more.

[269 lines irrelevant to AIDS have been removed. -- sysop]

   Obviously, many of the issues to be resolved in connection
with genetic testing -- widespread screening,
confidentiality, adequate counseling and others -- are
similar to those now being debated on testing for acquired
immune deficiency syndrome.  Some think policies now being
developed on AIDS will set a pattern for genetic testing,
despite substantial differences between the two areas.
   "AIDS is blazing this giant pathway about how much society
really needs to know about all these risks," says Dartmouth's
Dr. Graham.
   But Thomas Murray, director of the Center for Medical
Ethics at Case Western Reserve University, is more cautious.
"All the right issues are being raised in the AIDS debate,
and the right arguments are being made," he says.  "But I
think the results are going to be a pretty mixed bag.  I
wouldn't want them carried over" to genetic testing.
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[64 lines irrelevant to AIDS have been removed. -- sysop]

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hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering 
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