HD Genetic Testing
Prenatal Predictive Testing~Article
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Yes, there is a cure for HD! With the help of a skilled doctor, YOU have the ability to stop the HD gene from passing on to your children. Here is the information you need to begin the process. From the Orange County Chapter of the HDSA.
Prenatal Predictive testing for HD~Article
 
Lancet Volume 357, Number 9259     17 March 2001
Predictive testing for Huntington's disease
Sir Michael Hayden's Dec 9 commentar is  a timely report on the experience of  almost 15 years of predictive testing for Huntington's disease.
 
In addition to the factors he mentions for the low uptake of prenatal testing is an issue of identity between the parent who carries the mutation and an affected fetus.
 
A decision to terminate such a pregnancy involves destroying a fetus that is in the same genetic situation as that parent. Some of the people in families that carry the disease feel this dilemma acutely.

Our evidence supports Hayden's point that parents are reluctant to use prenatal testing for various late-onset disorders.
 
In a questionnaire survey of students and adult women, 98% of our sample thought prenatal testing should be offered for disorders such as Tay Sach's disease or cystic fibrosis, but 80% thought so for Huntington's disease and inherited breast cancer syndromes (unpublished data).
 
Men and women may differ in their response to information about health risks.More women than men request predictive genetic testing or carrier detection testing, which could relate to the position that women hold in families as being the so-called genetic housekeepers.
Typically women have most knowledge of family medical history.2 Work with women who have an inherited risk of breast or ovarian cancer shows that many perceive themselves as having a responsibility to their kin (past, present, and future generations) to establish the magnitude of the risks to themselves and family members, and to act on this information by some form of risk management. 3

The acknowledgment of genetic respon-sibility for kin seems part of this same typically female role.

Martin Richards
-------------------------------------------
Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3RF, UK (e-mail: mpmr@cam.ac.uk)

1 Hayden MR. Predictive testing for Huntington's disease: the calm after the storm.Lancet 2000; 356: 1944-45. [Text]

2 Richards MPM. Families, kinship and genetics. In: Marteau T, Richards MPM, eds.
The troubled helix. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996: 249-73.

3 Hallowell N. Doing the right thing: genetic risk and responsibility.Sociol Health Illness  1999; 21: 597-621. [PubMed]