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The Importance Of Risk Assessment In Genetic Counseling

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1. Describe risk assessment in genetic counseling Genetic risk should be estimated as precisely as possible as it is an important component of genetic testing and counseling, and for family decision making. It is always good to take out extra information from pedigree charts and genetic testing as it can improve the accuracy of risk assessment drastically. The risk can be calculated using Bayesian analyses. Among populations, families or individuals within the same family have significantly different probabilities of carrying a particular mutation. Genetic risk assessment is subject to modification as it is a population based estimate of probability at a particular time (it is because population based data and testing methods are being updated constantly, expansion of families, new offsprings and new clinical and genetic testing information are being added). Other factors that affect risk assessment are analytic or interpretive laboratory errors as they can alter the estimates of carrier frequencies, allele distributions ad other such parameters. Therefore, genetic risk is quantified systematically. The most often …show more content…

This idea was used by Galton and many others to promote selective breeding in humans to improve the human species. The Eugenicists described lack of education as familial feeble mindedness and rural poverty as shiftlessness. There was an overestimation of scientific difficulties in seeing whether traits are heritable and to what limit hereditary contributes to the trait as most human traits are strongly influenced by environmental factors and are even complex in their inheritance pattern. Though genetic counseling aims to help patients and families in managing pain and suffering caused by a genetic disorder , it should not be confused with the eugenic goal of decreasing the incidence and recurrence of a genetic

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