Patient education and counseling
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The recent identification of gene mutations involved in hereditary cancers increasingly allows for predictive DNA-testing. There is an urgent need to analyse the ethical issues involved. ⋯ Using international guidelines for presymptomatic DNA-testing for Huntington disease and the Li-Fraumeni syndrome as a model, a provisional protocol, which entails four parts is presented: (i) inclusion and exclusion criteria; (ii) preparing for the test; (iii) informing about the results of the test; (iv) post-test counselling and evaluation. The importance of an integral education of both doctors and the public is stressed.