pharmacogenetics

Today on The Beagle, one of the rock stars of the genetic counseling field, Jehannine Austin, Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia. Jehannine has pioneered the field of psychiatric genetic counseling and, more broadly, they have worked energetically for decades to make psychiatric genetic counseling – and all genetic counseling -- an evidence-based discipline. An impactful figure for both the humanity and the rigor they bring to our field, Jehannine shares their perception of where psychiatric genetic counseling is today, speculates a bit on where it is heading.

Kicker: remember that much-discussed incoming Presidential Address at NSGC 5 years ago? Jehannine has learned a few things since then, and there is something they want us to know about imposter syndrome.

As we get underway with All of Us, the huge tax-payer funded project to assemble a database or genomic and medical information on 1 million Americans, there are people working hard to make sure it fulfills two founding principles. First, to treat participants like partners (and this means giving them access to the results). And second, to make sure this effort leaves no one out. Our guest today on the Beagle, Louise Bier of the Institute for Genomic Medicine at Columbia University, has been in the trenches on AOU, helping to put together the infrastructure that will create a database that looks like America in all ways: not only ancestry and race, but sex and gender, socioeconomic status and geography.

So Louise – how’s it going?