Editorial

Extract

After more than a year of study, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues reports that the rapid growth in unanticipated findings from advanced medical tests, especially in genomics, has outpaced the ability of physicians to handle them ethically. Help to precisely identify what genomic or other medical-test data can produce meaningful benefits, is needed. The report, Anticipate and Communicate: Ethical Management of Incidental and Secondary Findings in the Clinical, Research, and Direct-to-Consumer Contexts also include the need to determine what data patients want to see and to have explained.

For the past decade or so, increasing numbers of voices have been raised to support the idea that the amount of raw data, as opposed to interpretative findings, are overwhelming the health care delivery system. In as early as 2004, Michael Laposata et al. published a ground-breaking article in the Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine concerning the creation of interpretative reports and the positive response of physicians to these reports. ASCLS has also voiced its opinion on this topic.

What seems to be missing in the public record are the ideas, investigations, and reports of how hospitals and clinics of every size and description are attempting to address this problem. In many circumstances, perhaps the issue is one of how to design a traditional quantitative research project or an innovative qualitative one. In others, it might be a lack of confidence in writing for publication. In yet another, it might be an all-too-common apathy for either the…