It is hoped that gene therapy will provide the cure for many diseases in the future. Gene screening and education lends itself to treatment but also to finding and enacting preventative means. Often in today's society, medicine looks more to curing the illness, rather than educating the public on ways that the illness could be prevented. Often the amount spent for this education is significantly cheaper than medical bills and the cost of the cure. One may think that once the disease is acquired the chance for prevention is lost, however, a new trend called preventative management is emerging.
Preventative management is used to prevent to complications that are often associated with diseases.
Preventative management replaces diagnosis with a positive plan of action that benefits patients and empowers families. These preventative management ideas are often slow to be implemented. Barriers include time constraints that do not allow for necessary history, examination, or counseling, a lack of resources, and our disease-oriented medical traditions that make physicians reactive to symptoms rather than proactive for prevention. Even with the advancement in the field of genetic screening, an individual's genetic information is still protected. Special laws have been enacted to ensure better protection.