Genetic Counselor, Professor. Ex-prez @geneticcouns, VP @ISPGnet they/them 🏳️🌈
Oct 16, 2022 • 22 tweets • 5 min read
1/n Ok, monster 🧵coming, my thoughts on the issues underlying recent goings on in our #GeneChat community. History first:
Genetic counseling as a profession was created & driven by middle/upper-class cishet white women in the USA. (NB: cishet is not a slur, just a descriptor).
2/n Genetic counseling was emerging as a profession at the same time as feminist ethics was becoming recognized (see this great article about feminist ethics: )
And, feminist ethics underpins genetic counseling practice.plato.stanford.edu/entries/femini…
Jul 16, 2021 • 26 tweets • 8 min read
1/n Okaaaaay. I know that this is only a tangential issue in this particular whole new shit-show, but its an *important* tangential issue (to me, anyway).
So, its time for a non-directiveness tweetorial - its Friday afternoon THREAD TIME! Yay. #GCChat
2/n I *intended* to do a tweetorial about non-directiveness >2 years ago (see tweet below). But my enthusiasm waned. I think I hoped that if we all just stopped using the term it would finally just go away & stop bothering us #GCChat
Another powerful post (if you’re not following @AwareDare please do!) - this really shows how we have quite some work to do as a profession. Extending the same empathy and compassion to each other as we do to our patients is so key… #gcchat
🧵 More reflections on this: it seems to me that we are invested in a model where we imagine that a GC cannot be a vulnerable/“imperfect” human (or indeed even just a whole complex human) AND be an effective helper of others. We hold ourselves to unachievable/undesirable ideals
Oct 30, 2019 • 13 tweets • 14 min read
Here's some stuff from my talk at #WCPG2019 about polygenic risk scores (PRSs) & the public:
1st thing to know: people are already accessing their own PRSs for a wide variety of conditions.
By uploading DTC genetic testing data into 3rd party websites #GCchat 1/n
My friend and colleague @lassefolkersen who founded impute.me has some data about how often people are accessing PRSs at his site. #WCPG2019#GCchat 2/n
