Community Genetics in The Netherlands

From DNA to the Community. International Conference on Community Genetics. June 20-22, 2000, Jonquière, Québec. Guest Editors: Bernadette Modell, London; Arnold Christianson, Pretoria; Daniel Gaudet, Saguenay We started using the term 'community genetics' in the Netherlands in 1995. 'We' represented a small group of people that called itself 'Initiative Group Community Genetics', and consisted of three clinical geneticists, a birth defects epidemiologist, and two biologists specialized in educating high school and university students in genetics. The first activity of the group was to organize an invitational workshop on community genetics in 1996 [1]. The program is shown in table 1. After an introduction on behalf of the Minister of Health, Welfare and Sports, the program started with a discussion of ethical aspects and the views of the patient and parent organizations. The fact that we started using the term 'community genetics' in 1995 does not mean that community genetic activities did not exist in the Netherlands before 1996. We will review these activities, explain why we wanted to introduce the term 'community genetics' and tell what happened afterwards. First, however, we would like to expand a little on the concept itself [2]. Copyright © 2001 S. Karger AG, Basel