When science and the public meet: training for genetic counseling

Genetic counseling is beginning to be recognized as a very complex endeavor, as is its training. Attempts to list the separate purposes to be achieved, like the findings of research and evaluation of the process, have been unsatisfactory and even contradictory. These attempts are compared with somewhat similar results in quite different fields of the public understanding of science. The paper discusses these results in the context of first-year and post-graduate courses in human genetics given in a Brazilian university. We suggest that the students' reactions to genetic counseling may be better understood on a two domain model of knowing, and that an explicit understanding of this perspective might be of assistance to trainee genetic counselors while they are learning how to help clients more effectively.