THEY are called “incidental” findings, but for the people concerned they can be anything but. Every once in a while during research on human subjects, a scientist uncovers unlooked-for information that has serious implications for a volunteer’s health.
Incidental findings are already causing dilemmas in projects that use brain imaging, during which tumours and other abnormalities sometimes come to light (see “We need to talk about your scan”). But they are poised to create even more far-reaching problems in the field of human genetics, where genome-wide studies are accumulating vast amounts of data that may have a bearing on…
