Who is Protecting the Genomes of English People?
December 30, 2014
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Dr. Helen Wallace is Director of GeneWatch UK, www.genewatch.org, a not-for-profit organization which aims to ensure that genetic technologies are used in the public interest. She talks about her life, career, and experience of family caregiving. She explains GeneWatch’s work and its value for families and family caregivers. She highlights the potential for misuse or abuse of genetic information collected by hospitals, commercial organizations and for or by police and criminal justice systems. She discusses protections needed to safeguard people, their genetic relatives and their descendants against the risks of misuse or abuse of genetic information. She says what more she would like to do and see done to improve safeguards for people against the risks of misuse or abuse of genetic information. She shares her message for individuals and family caregivers who are wondering whether their genetic information is being collected by the hospital, clinic or doctor who’s treating them.
Family Caregivers Unite!
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Family caregivers are the people who provide care to partners, parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors and even co-workers. They are the people who provide care when everyone else has gone home. They are the people who organize the functioning of the home for the person with special needs, and for the family as a whole. They are the coordinators of care, the managers of appointments, the preventers of loneliness, and the makers of decisions even to the point of Power of Attorney. And they are so often people who themselves are burdened with their own health challenges and who may be in only marginally better health than the persons to whom they are providing family caregiving.
Dr. Gordon Atherley
Dr Gordon Atherley holds the British equivalent of the Canadian PhD and MD degrees, and LLD, Honoris Causa, from Canada’s Simon Fraser University. His awards include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK. His medical specialties are occupational medicine and public health.
As first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Canadian equivalent of the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, he led the creation of Canada’s electronic information service in occupational health and safety, now used in more than 40 countries.
In academia, he held senior, tenured, full-time positions, including departmental chair, in university faculties of physics, engineering, and medicine. He is the author of a textbook and numerous articles and publications.
Since retiring from medical practice, he’s built up Greyhead Associates, which critically researches the safety, effectiveness and fairness of health services for persons with special needs.
Through Virtual Care International, a company of which he’s President, he’s involved in providing sensible technology to family caregivers to help them with their responsibilities, workloads, and concerns.
Now an activist, he urges family caregivers to unite because, more and more, it’s not just their families who depend on them, it’s also the healthcare system as a whole, as it struggles to meet more and more needs of more and more people.
