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Personal Genomics is Booming, But There's a Nationwide Shortage of Genetic Counselors Who Can Make Sense of that DNA Data (wired.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Wired report: When Dan Riconda graduated with a master's degree in genetic counseling from Sarah Lawrence College in 1988, the Human Genome Project was in its very first year, DNA evidence was just beginning to enter the courts, and genetic health tests weren't yet on the market. He found one of the few jobs doing fetal diagnostics for rare diseases, which often meant helping young families through the worst time in their lives.
What a difference 30 years makes. Today, with precision medicine going mainstream and an explosion of apps piping genetic insights to your phone from just a few teaspoons of spit, millions of Americans are having their DNA decoded every year. That deluge of data means that genetic counselors -- the specialized medical professionals trained to help patients interpret genetic test results -- are in higher demand than ever. With two to three job openings for every new genetic counseling graduate, the profession is facing a national workforce shortage.
[...] Pharmaceutical and lab testing firms are routinely hiring genetic counselors to make sure new screening technologies for these targeted drugs are developed in an ethical way. According to a 2018 survey conducted by the National Society for Genetic Counselors, a quarter of the workforce now works in one of these non-patient-facing jobs. A smaller study, published in August, found that one-third of genetic counselors had changed jobs in the past two years, nearly all of them from a hospital setting to a laboratory one.
What a difference 30 years makes. Today, with precision medicine going mainstream and an explosion of apps piping genetic insights to your phone from just a few teaspoons of spit, millions of Americans are having their DNA decoded every year. That deluge of data means that genetic counselors -- the specialized medical professionals trained to help patients interpret genetic test results -- are in higher demand than ever. With two to three job openings for every new genetic counseling graduate, the profession is facing a national workforce shortage.
[...] Pharmaceutical and lab testing firms are routinely hiring genetic counselors to make sure new screening technologies for these targeted drugs are developed in an ethical way. According to a 2018 survey conducted by the National Society for Genetic Counselors, a quarter of the workforce now works in one of these non-patient-facing jobs. A smaller study, published in August, found that one-third of genetic counselors had changed jobs in the past two years, nearly all of them from a hospital setting to a laboratory one.
Now I need to keep all my relatives on a short leash just because I value my privacy.
I think the idea is that an analyst usually presents technical data to experts of a different domain, whereas a counselor could present technical data to the laity. Probably also rooted in the early days of the field when instead of "here's what kind of cancer you ought to be on the lookout for" it was "this is the horrible and slow way your loved one is going to die, and here's how you can mitigate that while going bankrupt"
Part of the job of a genetic counselor is patient facing.
Decode your health
Family planning to decide whether to have children or adopt could be a very good reason for genetic counseling, especially if the potential parents have medical issues. Preventive health care for people at high risk of various genetically caused diseases could also be a legitimate reason for genetic counseling.
Here's how it works.
You will end up looking a lot like your mother or father, depending on your birth gender.
You will have the problems your parents have (propensity for dementia, alcoholism, diabetes, cancer, etc.).
If your grandparents live past 80 take care of yourself and you can too (eat well or exercise, one or the other works, generally). Pay attention to dementia, get your paperwork in order depending on how you want to handle that, just in case.
If you want, ask potential child-birthing partners about their family history. I wouldn't suggest this, let love lead the way and have a good time.
BlameBillCosby.com
It always intrigues me how the job market is considered to have 'shortfalls'. There is no shortfall of genetics councillors. There is a shortage of genetics councilors at the current market price for them.
It's also funny how this sort of thing only applies to the little guys. I'm yet to hear a politician or business leader suggest that rising CEO/banker wages are a sign of a lack of competition for executive jobs, and that policies should be taken to increase supply in those professions.
Not yet, but everything described in the summary sounds like it’s ripe for replacement by computer. There may be a temporary boom in the field, but it’s already too late to get in. By the time people choosing majors today could get in, I’d wager that a lot of that stuff will have been automated, leaving the only decent jobs as the ones that are doing new analysis to feed into the computers.
Not really. A big part of their job is to explain to patients what the results mean, what they don't mean, and answer questions they have. This is the problem 23andMe had with their health reports. The reports showed the technical interpretation but a lot of people didn't understand what it meant, even though it was laid out fairly comprehensively. Their forums were littered with "according to the test I have __________" when what the reports really said was that they had a SNIP that research showed might be related to ________________ and that research supported a x% genetic component to the condition, with y% being lifestyle or just random bad luck. People need people to help explain the actual impact of the results to them. Right now computers aren't up to that task. Not every condition that comes out of these tests is a binary you-have-it-or-you-don't genetic disorder.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Genetic counselors function as analysts.
It should be highly emphasized many of these tests are of questionable utility in the real world. How to interpret the results is often not at all intuitive. Its a wild west type of situation and I generally wouldn't recommend having any of these done without proper guidance.
Zero guarantees it doesn't end up in a Government or Law Enforcement database, or at the very least bought up by the likes of insurance companies, so they can find some excuse to jack up your rates or flat-out deny you coverage.
Also, reminder:
GATTACA
Don't fall for it, folks.
You don't. It's about as credible at this point in time as someone who has the title 'Xenobiologist'.
Genetic counselors are a lot like real estate agents, settlement agents, CPA's, tax lawyers, etc. Yes, you could almost certainly do everything this person does, but the amount of time you will save for a very moderate fee is significant.
On a personal level, my wife and I had genetic counseling before we had kids (we're older than most newly weds). The counselor took family medical histories and combined that with our genetic test results to give us a list of probabilities for various outcomes. All very interesting, and something that anyone with access to information and knowledge of probability could do, but the price to have it provided was much less than the time it would have taken us to do this same thing ourselves.
Like you say, analysis is a big part of their job, but as others have mentioned, they are the patient facing side of genetic testing. You need a person who is trained and able to present very bad news to folks in certain cases.
"It should be highly emphasized many of these tests are of questionable utility in the real world. How to interpret the results is often not at all intuitive."
This is an understatement. According to today's Scientific American, "There are two potential issues arising from the question of their results' accuracy. The first is somewhat trivial: Has the sequencing been done well?" This is not a simple matter. Different labs will give different results. One lab failed to recognize that the DNA submitted was from a dog. False positives for disease are common in consumer lab results.
"Assuming the tests are done accurately, some discrepancies can still arise from differences in the companies' DNA databases. " These databases are limited and differ from each other.
The part of the article relevant to 'genetic counselors' is this: "If we assume the data generated is accurate, then the second question that arises is on the interpretation. And this is where it gets murky..." The counselor or analyst must deal almost entirely with probabilities. There is rarely a single gene that codes for an interesting trait; there may be many and not all of them have been located yet. An example given is that you may have two genes that are associated with blue eyes, and yet not have blue eyes.
The author concludes: "Genetics is a probabilistic science, and there are no genes "for" in particular. I have severe reservations about the utility of genetic tests that indicate one individual's propensity for certain conditions outside of a clinical setting; if you don't have a PhD in genetics, these results can be misleading or even troubling."
https://www.scientificamerican...
...omphaloskepsis often...
Don't you understand the amount of grief that will be felt by millions when they realize they are not a "minority" race, but just plain old Western European?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Now that's a nice non-sequitur.
I understand that the tests may be useful even though my impression is that most tests are done without good reason. It's just that I don't understand exactly why there would be a need for something combining analysis and patient interaction. Perhaps it's due to the imprecision and uncertainty of the data and the interpretation of it?