Maggie Dewhurst

This month's speaker will be Maggie Dewhurst, MS, Genetic Counselor at

Sickle Cell and Thalassemia Comprehensive Care Clinic with Dr. Schulz and genetic counselor Maggie Dewhurst at the Children's Hospital at Providence on the 1st and 3rd Monday afternoons each month.

Maggie Dewhurst, MS, Genetic Counselormdewhurs@provak.org

Anchorage Daily News - Maggie Dewhurst, the genetic counselor at Providence Alaska Medical Center, will give a talk called "Is There Cancer in Your Family Tree?"from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the hospital's East Auditorium.

Maggie Dewhurst, MS, Genetic Counselor, Providence

which don't involve genetics.Some are things like getting your blood drawn and have your cholesterol checked.And if those are high, you're at risk to have a heart attack," said Maggie Dewhurst, MS, Genetic Counselor, Providence.
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And it is probably most appropriate to be able to have that counseling piece on top of the genetics piece," said Dewhurst.

"If you're not hearing from a physician or a genetic counselor about how the testing is interpreted, then you are not getting the best care possible," said Dewhurst.

"It's quite a bit different from "Gattaca.' ‘Gattaca' is more the concept of genetic engineering; genetic counseling is really more about education, it's helping people understand whatever part of genetics is important to them," said Maggie Dewhurst, a genetic counselor.

Dewhurst is one of just three genetic counselors in Alaska.She says it's a growing field both in Alaska and in the Lower 48, but many still don't know what it's all about.

"It's kind of a process of education and then supportive counseling and decision making," Dewhurst said.

Dewhurst says it begins with an understanding of chromosomes -- the largest packaging unit for our genes.Genes are hereditary units that determine a particular characteristic in an organism.Whether your child has blue or brown eyes, what color his hair will be and, of course, the child's predisposition to conditions or diseases given the family background.

In the 1950s, when all of this complex information started to emerge, so did the need for genetic counselors.

"Basically, once we knew there were some conditions that were caused by having extra or missing chromosomes, we started to think that we needed a genetic counselor to explain that to people," Dewhurst said.

So Dewhurst says her job is to work with patients, guiding them through the complexity.Patients are often referred by a doctor.After she does extensive interviews, say for example, with someone related to a person with breast cancer.

"I'm going to ask them kind of some silly questions that they don't really understand why I'm asking, but I'm basically gathering their risk of getting breast cancer themselves or their risk of having inherited a breast cancer gene," Dewhurst said.

Sandra St. John, the clinical manager of the infusion center at Providence Alaska Medical Center, works with patients who have cancer.She says genetic counseling is valuable information.

"If they are proven not to have that predisposition for cancer, it certainly eases their mind -- if they are proven to have predisposition, then we can offer them earlier detections, screenings and more often screening so that they can have their cancer diagnosed at a much earlier stage," St. John said.

Unlike the world of "Gattaca," with a predisposition or not, patients can get the help they need.

Maggie Dewhurst says training programs for genetic counselors spend a lot of time on ethics.This is basically to maintain integrity in the field and to make sure genetic discrimination doesn't happen.

Dewhurst says some insurance companies will take it, while others won't.They're still trying to work those out.Aside from the counseling, if tests are needed, those are added costs.But genetic testing isn't cheap.For breast cancer, it's about $3,000.Dewhurst says often they try to help patients find ways to cover costs.