SXC.HU, KURHANCompanies, clinicians, and researchers ought to inform consumers, patients, and study participants about research findings that may impact their health. From there, the parties should make a shared decision as to whether the patient wants to be alerted to unexpected results. That’s according to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, which today (December 12) issued a report containing recommendations for dealing with incidental or secondary findings uncovered in the direct-to-consumer (DTC), clinical, and research settings.
“The importance of incidental findings, and the problem, is only increasing in magnitude,” commission member Stephen Hauser told reporters this week. “Each of us has scores of deleterious mutations in our genes and these will be picked up every time a whole-genome sequence is obtained.” And high-resolution imaging techniques often uncover unexpected abnormalities, he noted.
What to do about unexpected health-related findings “is an issue that affects everybody,” commission chair Amy Gutmann said during the press briefing. In their report, Gutmann, Hauser, and colleagues propose that DTC companies, clinicians, and researchers ought to anticipate incidental findings that could come up and communicate them before procedures or tests are administered. The commission also advocates shared decision-making between the two groups.
Earlier this year, the American College ...
