Genetic Counselling: Practice and Principles

Ed Angus Clarke, Routledge, £13.99, pp 266, ISBN 0-415-08258-7 Why does genetic counselling arouse such strong emotions? Here we have an applied clinical science whose practitioners have striven for decades to maintain a non-controversial stance. Horror at the excesses of prewar eugenics movements and an unshakable belief in the principle of non- directive counselling have been the cornerstones of clinical genetic services throughout the Western world. Yet rarely a day passes without media attention. Where here we gone wrong? Perhaps we have become complacent. A prevailing …