I’ve recently come across this article at Nature Precedings written by Janice Edwards, Jacquie Greenberg and Margaret Sahhar. Check out these excerpts:
According to the National Society of Genetic Counselors in the USA “ To offer an optimum genetic service in a country it has been estimated that approximately 2 genetic counsellors per 1 million of the population would be the minimum number required.” Yet, the number of trained genetic counselors is estimated at less than 3000 worldwide.
Wow, we would need even more! Genetic counselors should play an important role in those genetic companies.
As global awakening in genetics continues, the Transnational Alliance for Genetic Counseling will promote transnational collaborations in genetic counselor education and research, stimulating international understanding of the role of genetics on human lives.
I wish I could promote more efficiently projects like this one.
Here is an other great example from Scientificblogging.com. The Clinical Genetics column is maintained by Prof. Camillo Di Cicco (University of Rome/Medicine) and you can find dozens of well-structured and valuable articles about genetic conditions there. I’ll definitely follow the RSS of his page.
And we shouldn’t forget about some open notebook projects. Stew at Flags and Lollipops asked a question:
Is there a super-semantic-web-enabled phenotype database out there*? I want to ask a question like ‘give a list of monogenic disorders whose locus has been confirmed by at least two labs, broken down by type of causative mutation type’ and get an answer.
So, I really believe we’re moving forward. Let me know please if you happen to know more similar methods to promote genetic conditions and the science of genetics.
