Balancing benefits, costs, and harms: policy implications of expanding cancer susceptibility testing from genetics clinics to the general population.

Expanding cancer susceptibility testing to the general population requires careful evaluation of clinical and public health benefits, with evidence supporting its use mainly for well-established genes.

• Why it matters: As testing moves beyond specialist clinics into routine care, there is a critical need to ensure that benefits outweigh harms, especially given limited evidence for many genes and risk scores.
• What they did: The authors reviewed current evidence and challenges across clinical and public health contexts, proposing a tiered, context-specific approach to guide responsible implementation.
• The result: This approach aims to maximize benefits and minimize harms by identifying settings where testing offers a net public health or clinical advantage, while restricting or researching less-supported applications.