Medicine
Genetics expert witnesses
Listed genetics expert witnesses address the scientific basis of inheritance, laboratory testing and the interpretation of genetic results. Their evidence explains what a result can and cannot establish.
01
The evidence
What a genetics expert witness is asked to determine
A genetics instruction may concern the reliability of a test, the significance of a variant, or the inferences that can properly be drawn from a result. The report should separate the laboratory question from the clinical consequence.
- Whether the test performed was appropriate to the question asked of the laboratory.
- Whether sample handling, analysis and reporting followed accepted practice.
- What the identified variant is capable of establishing, and with what degree of certainty.
- Whether an inheritance pattern supports or undermines the proposition advanced.
- Where a laboratory opinion ends and a clinician must address the individual patient.
Practitioners are listed across all four UK nations. Location can be narrowed in the register’s location listings before an instruction is made.
Claim contexts
Claims that instruct this discipline
These links describe the question genetics evidence can answer. They do not prescribe the scope of an individual instruction.
Clinical negligence claims
Testing, interpretation and reporting questions in genetic medicine.
View claim type → 02Birth injury and cerebral palsy claims
Genetic explanations advanced alongside perinatal evidence.
View claim type → 03Inquests
Genetic evidence where an inherited condition is relevant to a death.
View claim type →Search the register by the discipline used in the instruction.
See genetics listingsReport routes
Reports prepared
Laboratory records and reports support a records review report. A breach and causation report then addresses the clinical consequence of any error identified.
Where the parties instruct on the same scientific question, a single joint expert appointment may be appropriate. The report pages state what each route requires.
Genetics expert witness evidence
A geneticist expert witness explains what the laboratory result establishes, the limits of that conclusion, and the assumptions on which it rests.
Discipline and location are shown in the listing, and the enquiry is made with the practitioner. See the Genomics England alongside the case material.
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