Can Genetic Counselors Keep Up With 23andMe?
In hindsight, clicking on the email from 23andMe at 10 p.m., alone, on a particularly cold March night probably wasn’t the best idea. Still, Nancy Wurtzel thought she was prepared for the genetic-testing company to give her the news that she had inherited the gene for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Both her parents died from it—her father at 86 and her mother at 92.
But when Wurtzel stared at the blue glow of her computer screen announcing she had two copies of the ApoE4 variant and quoting her a 60-percent chance of developing Alzheimer’s by age 85, she panicked. “I could hardly catch my breath, and I felt like the floor was opening up. The reality hit me,” says Wurtzel, a 62-year-old public-relations consultant from Minneapolis. “I thought, ‘What do I do now?’”
What she should have done, she has come to believe, was see a genetic counselor. The 23andMe results included a from the National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) on where to find one in her area. But Wurtzel dismissed the idea. “I was kind of cocky because I had already done so much research. I thought, ‘What will they tell me that I don’t already know?’” She knew there was nothing she could do to prevent Alzheimer’s (although suggests lifestyle changes might delay onset). Besides, she didn’t want to pay $250 to $350 out of pocket for a consultation.
