GENETIC SCREENING, TESTING AND TREATMENT - HOW FAR CAN WE GO

Treatment comes in three forms: care, control, cure; each will be part of any new development in the management of genetic disease, either M endelian or complex. Diagnosis recognizes three states of disease: imp airment, disability, and handicap when the disease is symptomatic and has manifestations. Genetics in health care has the potential to preve nt these manifestations by interventions at the presymptomatic stage. Wherever cause of disease involves genotypic variation that undermines homeostasis, genetic testing and screening could play a predictive ro le. The area of greatest interest will be the common multifactorial di seases. While some persons worry that geneticists have taken society t oo fast and far along the road to ruin, it is closer to the truth that we have actually gone rather slowly and not very far along the road t o better personal and collective health. With wisdom and caution the n ew opportunities for genetic testing or screening will become part of health care; and sooner rather than later when better treatments for o ur inherited infirmities are found.