#GCChat Real talk here. How are you re-examining your clinical notes and how you document “ancestry” or “ethnicity” in cancer genetics? I want to stop asking, but am at a loss for how to best justify.

I’m trying to disentangle the circumstances this is actually useful in cancer risk assessment. Is it anymore in the era of pan-cancer panels?

And then there’s the systemic issue of classifications and racial bias where our references use a circular logic:

Justify asking for ancestry because of “documented” ancestry-based genetic associations. From our training. But those associations in and of themselves are biased in their classification of ancestry. We’re perpetuating inaccuracies.

Do we just stop asking about ancestry for cancer genetics? Do we just ask about Ashkenazi ancestry because of founder effect? Is it wrong to do that too? Still debating.