Quantifying Im/Probabilities: Genetic Counseling and the Development of Genetic Risk in the United States

Alexandra Stern highlights one of the cornerstones of genetic counseling,
genetic risk, from the perspective of both practitioners of genetic
counseling and clients and the historical development of the concept.

The final session of the 2011-12 Maryland Colloquium in the History of
Technology, Science, and Environment (MCHOTSE) takes place on Thursday,
April 26.  Refreshments 4:00-4:30 pm; presentation and discussion of pre-circulated paper, 4:30-6:00 pm.

Alexandra Minna Stern, Zina Pitcher Collegiate Professor in the 
History of Medicine at the University of Michigan and Associate Director 
of its Center for the History of Medicine,  will talk about “Quantifying 
Im/Probabilities: Genetic Counseling and the Development of Genetic Risk 
in the United States”. A commentary by Dr. Marian Moser Jones, University 
of Maryland, will follow. 

Discussion will be based on a pre-circulated paper, which is available here. 

An abstract is provided below.

Abstract:
This paper highlights one of the cornerstones of genetic counseling, genetic risk, from the perspective of both practitioners of genetic counseling and clients. I explore the historical development of the concept of risk from the 1940s to the present and illuminate the 
genealogies of the concept of genetic risk. I also seek to show how clients and patients experienced risk in varying ways, incorporating patient stories and experiences into the narrative.

For many clients, the mere possibility of any risk justifies genetic screening or testing. The tension between subjective understandings of risk and genetic counselors’ 
attempts to standardize risk figures is pivotal to grasping the unique position of genetic counseling and the power of genomic information in the 
twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

For more information, please contact Thomas Zeller.