From National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation:

Scientists at Stanford University say they’ve developed a blood test to that’s able to identify patients who are at risk for Alzheimer’s disease. So far, however, there is little medicine can do to treat the disease and no cure.

Neal Conen talked with Susan Davis, who has a family history of early onset Alzheimer’s. She said she would not want to take the test because it would not give her any information that could help guide her care.

A caller commented that she felt pressured by her obstetrician to have her pregnancy screened for Down syndrome. She was uncomfortable about the screening because she and her husband had decided they would not terminate the pregnancy. “I was kind of required to have the testing for Down syndrome,” she said. “We had the testing done kind of because my doctor said you have to because you’re old.”

An audio file of the show is available. Comments on the story are here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 4:21 pm and is filed under Down syndrome, abortion, alzheimer's, ethics, genetics, medicine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.