The emerging role of the physician in genetic counselling and testing for heritable breast, ovarian and colon cancer.

As a genetic testing for susceptibility to breast, ovarian and colon cancer becomes more readily available, physicians are faced with an increasing demand for information about inherited cancer risk. Because advances in treatment have not kept pace with advances in predictive testing, the provision of genetic counselling and testing marks a departure from the traditional role of the physician. A systematic framework is needed within which the physician's emerging role in predictive testing for heritable cancer can be delineated. The development of such a framework will require collaboration among professionals in a range of scientific disciplines, as well as the suspension of traditional assumptions about the physicians role.