Together, these two studies illustrate both the optimism and the growing pains of genomic medicine for common diseases. Genetic testing for rare conditions is now available for more than 1,000 diagnoses and is commonplace in genetics practices. Outside of specialized genetics clinics, primary care physicians and nongenetics subspecialists continue to experience varying push-and-pull forces regarding the implementation of more widely used genetic technologies. Costs – previously an easy target for those resistant to genetic testing – continue to drop and, with the forthcoming $1,000 genome, will no longer be viewed as the main impediment to genomic medicine. Internists and other generalists will increasingly be called upon to evaluate genomic data and decide when to move forward.
This column, "Genetics in Your Practice," regularly appears in Internal Medicine News, an Elsevier publication. Dr. Taylor is associate professor in the department of internal medicine and director of adult clinical genetics at the University of Colorado at Denver. To respond to this column, e-mail him at imnews@elsevier.com.