Audrey Heimler and colleagues founded the National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) in 1979 in New Hyde Park in New York, New York. Her stated goals were to establish the field of genetic counseling within biomedicine and to coordinate counselors’ voices, so that physicians and others in the medical industry would not dictate the future of the field. Genetic counselors inform patients about the potential for inherited diseases passed on through family lineages and help to navigate the options available. NSGC helped establish the field of genetic counseling by formulating guidelines for accreditation in university programs, establishing curriculum for continuing education of members, and creating committees to respond to issues that pertain to genetic disorders and the way they are presented to patients. As scientists continue to research the human genome, particularly in the area of prenatal genetics, an area of medicine that allows physicians to diagnose the health of the fetus prior to birth, genetic counseling is an established field in reproductive medicine.

Noninvasive fetal aneuploidy detection technology allows for the detection of fetal genetic conditions, specifically having three chromosomes, a condition called aneuploidy, by analyzing a simple blood sample from the pregnant woman. Dennis Lo and Rossa Chiu researched methods of detection of aneuploidies in the early twenty-first century. Their research has been specifically applied to three trisomies, trisomy twenty-one known as Down syndrome, trisomy eighteen known as Edwards Syndrome, and trisomy thirteen known as Patau Syndrome. Prior to the ability to detect fetal DNA in a pregnant woman’s blood, physicians performed amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling, two techniques that increase the risk of spontaneous abortion. Noninvasive detection of trisomy twenty-one, eighteen, and thirteen technology allows for a more accurate and safer detection of those conditions than methods available before.