Perceived Inheritance

摘要

Even within the lifetime of most Baby Boomers, it will become possible for any middle-class American to obtain a substantially complete sequence of his or her own genome. The interesting question is not when that will happen but what we will do with the data when we have them-how we will turn the personal sequences into actionable knowledge. These are the issues that Robert Klitzman grapples with in Am I My Genes? Klitzman, a psychiatrist and bioethicist at Columbia University, conducted two-hour interviews of 64 individuals affected by or deemed to be at risk for one of three genetic conditions-Huntington's disease, breast cancer, or alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency. He published a somewhat more technical account of his findings in a ten-page paper (1). The expanded space provided by the book allows him to present more direct quotes, to discuss matters at greater length, and to correct a few numerical errors. Nonetheless, the earlier journal article may strike health care professionals as more concise and to the point.