Year: 2006
Type: article
Abstract: Among bioethicists and members of the public, genetics is often regarded as unique in its ethical challenges. As medical researchers and clinicians increasingly combine genetic information with a range of non-genetic information in the study and clinical management of patients with common diseases, the unique ethical challenges attributed to genetics must be re-examined. A process of genetic routinisation that will have implications for research and clinical ethics, as well as for public conceptions of genetic information, is constituted by the emergence of new forms of genetic medicine, in which genetic information is interpreted in a multifactorial frame of reference. Although the integration of genetics in medical research and treatment may be a helpful corrective to the mistaken assumptions of genetic essentialism or determinism, the routinisation of genetics may have unintended consequences for the protection of genetic information, perceptions of non-genetic information and the loss of genetic research as a laboratory for exploring issues in research and clinical ethics. Consequently, new ethical challenges are presented by the increasing routinisation of genetic information in both biomedical and public spheres.
Source: Journal of Medical Ethics
Authors: M W Foster, C D M Royal, R R Sharp
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Funders: U.S. Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, Health Resources and Services Administration, Office of Science, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institute of General Medical Sciences, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Center for Research Resources
OpenAlex ID: W2101981528