NHS `NOT READY FOR GENETIC TESTING DEMAND'
PA 12.12.98 10:21
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By Alison Little, Chief Political Correspondent, PA News
The National Health Service is not ready for the expected huge
explosion in public demand for genetic testing, according to a
new report.
The NHS is "sleep-walking into a genetic future", says
a report from the Institute of Public Policy Research, due to be
published on Monday.
Repot author Jo Lenaghan, research fellow in health policy at the
IPPR, claimed private companies were offering inappropriate
services to the public, without proper explanation of the
technology.
"We are discovering lots of new developments in genetics
every day," she told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
"We haven't identified the questions, let alone provided the
answers to the issues it raises for the NHS."
She did not believe it was yet understood that GPs would have to
explain the implications of genetic testing in terms, for
example, of disease.
"The aim of our report is to begin this debate and try to
develop a national coordinated strategy so the health service can
take advantage of these new developments."
Dr Vivian Nathanson, of the British Medical Association, told the
programme the NHS had been looking at the issue for some time.
"The difficulty is that there are a lot of
uncertainties," she said.
It was not yet known how many of the new discoveries would be
really useful in the short term.
Lifestyle must be taken into account, as well as genetic make-up
when assessing disease risks.
The target of information must be children, who would be the ones
really to benefit from the new science.
Not all people with a possible genetic disease risk wanted to
know about it, she added.