HEALTH, TRAVEL, SPORTS, FOOD
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This Week's focus:
Health
As technology expands
opportunities for
genetic testing, new
medical, ethical and
legal questions arise.
RUTHAN BRODSKY
Special to The Jewish News
A
dvances in testing are bringing new
hope - and some fears - to Jewish fami-
lies who are at higher than normal risk
for illness stemming from inherited
defective genes.
A single test now permits identification of indi-
viduals at higher than normal risk for five diseases:
Tay-Sachs, Cystic Fibrosis, Canavan, Gaucher and
Niemann-Pick.
Other tests can screen for genetic alterations
that increase the likelihood of breast cancer - a
mutation found in 1 percent of Ashkenazi women,
those of Central and East European descent - or
for a predisposition to colon cancer, a genetic
change inherited by 6 percent of Ashkenazi Jews.
The improved screening
procedures
can alert indi-
Dr. Feldman runs a
genetic testing depart- viduals that they have a
higher than normal risk for
ment at Henry Ford.
these diseases or that their
children are at heightened
risk. But the tests in themselves do not prove the
presence of the disease. Thus they may raise fears
unnecessarily, creating stress that is itself
unhealthy.
Dr. Mark Evans, professor of molecular medi-
cine and genetics at Wayne State University Med-
ical School, says he expects the testing technology
will continue to improve rapidly but that the
moral issues will prove increasingly troublesome.
"The problem will be -how to deal with the ethical
issues that result from that kind of testing," he
says.
Testing, he and other experts note, can have an
impact on decisions about family, marriage, child-
bearing and how individuals live their lives.