That's just one of the big moral questions which Wagga genetics counsellor Michelle Stewart confronts in her day-to-day life.

"Occasionally people aren't so sure about what pathway they will take. My job is to provide them with the information they need to make the best decision for them," she said.

"Some people maybe are better off not knowing ... More people would prefer not to know with the neurodegenerative conditions."

Ms Stewart is the sole genetics counsellor for the Murrumbidgee Local Health District where she works with people "across the whole spectrum of life", from young children to expectant parents and individual adults.

She believes her field of work will only become more crucial as science develops, though it is not yet widely-understood.

"We work with individuals and families where there might be a health problem or condition in the family that is passed on through the genes," she said.

"We also see a lot of children ... where there might be problems in development that might be due to a genetic fault that may have just happened in them for the first time."

Ms Stewart said her most frequent referral was woman wanting to find out whether they carry the BRCA gene mutation, which greatly heightens the risk of developing breast cancer.

She also sees rarer, complicated genetic disorders such as Huntington's Disease, a devastating neurological condition for which there is no cure.

Ms Stewart has been a genetics counsellor for 12 years and first moved to Wagga four years ago.

She plans on staying put in the city, where she works to support residents across the entire Murrumbidgee.

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"In regional NSW, most local health districts have probably more than one [genetic counsellor], it largely depends on the population," she said.

"It is a bit of an aspiration of mine to try and promote the service and have more than one of us."

Before she embarked on a career in science, Ms Stewart was an Olympic athlete who competed in archery in the 2000 Sydney games.

She was later studying psychology in Canberra where she became fascinated by biology and the field of genetics.

She still remembers the moment where she realised she was where she wanted to be.

"One of the lecturers said, 'The advances in health in the last 100 years have been medicine based. In the next 100 years they'll be genetics based," she said.

"I thought that was really amazing that that was where we were going."

Ms Stewart will be celebrated in this year's Genetic Counsellor Awareness Day on November 12.