Most contemporary “gene-hunting” begins as bench science in molecular genetics and often has relatively indirect connections with the kinds of clinical services that are relevant to the education and counseling of individuals regarding genetic information. Even when bench scientists are confident that the genetic information they uncover is reliable and medically relevant, they have been admonished not to preempt the process of epidemiologic studies and clinical trials that normally should precede the clinical use of a new genetic test. Until recently, the most common practice has been to condition the participants’ DNA contribution on the understanding that no individual findings would be returned to them under the auspices of the research, pending the field research that would transform the results into genuine clinical knowledge.