Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: diverse ethics
- 2 Darwinism and ethics
- 3 Creation and relation
- 4 Embryo experimentation: public policy in a pluralist society
- 5 Ethical considerations in genetic testing: an empirical study of presymptomatic diagnosis of Huntington's disease
- 6 Identity matters
- 7 The virtues in a professional setting
- 8 Medical ethics, moral philosophy and moral tradition
- 9 Roman suicide
- 10 Women and children first
- 11 Moral uncertainty and human embryo experimentation
- 12 Morality: invention or discovery?
- 13 Quality of life and health care
- 14 Dependency: the foundational value in medical ethics
- 15 Not more medical ethics
- Index
5 - Ethical considerations in genetic testing: an empirical study of presymptomatic diagnosis of Huntington's disease
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 April 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: diverse ethics
- 2 Darwinism and ethics
- 3 Creation and relation
- 4 Embryo experimentation: public policy in a pluralist society
- 5 Ethical considerations in genetic testing: an empirical study of presymptomatic diagnosis of Huntington's disease
- 6 Identity matters
- 7 The virtues in a professional setting
- 8 Medical ethics, moral philosophy and moral tradition
- 9 Roman suicide
- 10 Women and children first
- 11 Moral uncertainty and human embryo experimentation
- 12 Morality: invention or discovery?
- 13 Quality of life and health care
- 14 Dependency: the foundational value in medical ethics
- 15 Not more medical ethics
- Index
Summary
Advances in molecular biology have given rise to a new era in medical diagnostics. Physicians will soon be able to detect many serious diseases, or determine high genetic risk for them, years before symptom onset. Prenatal and presymptomatic genetic tests already exist for several single-gene illnesses, including Duchenne muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, polycystic kidney disease, and Huntington's disease. Tests indicating susceptibility to certain forms of cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, bipolar affective disorder, alcoholism, and other common illnesses are likely to be developed in the not-too-distant future.
Although predictive DNA tests have the potential to revolutionize the practice of medicine, their social, economic, and ethical complexities are only now beginning to be seriously addressed (Holtzman, 1989). This chapter will outline some of the ethical issues involved in predictive genetic testing, and illustrate them with examples from a program of testing for Huntington's disease at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. One of the primary objectives of this program is to provide sound empirical data to serve as a basis for ethical decision making in the area of genetic diagnosis.
The decision to be tested
Under virtually all circumstances, informed consent should be obligatory in genetic testing of adults for future disease vulnerability. The reasons for this are several. First, predictive genetic tests represent a new and innovative, if not experimental, technology. They are not yet part of routine clinical practice, and our experience with them is limited. Secondly, such tests are inherently elective and discretionary.
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- Information
- Medicine and Moral Reasoning , pp. 41 - 59Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994
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