This essay examines the arguments for and against working towards the objective of human germ line engineering for medical purposes. Germ line changes which result as a secondary consequence of other well designed and ethically acceptable manipulations of somatic cells to cure an otherwise fatal disease can be seen as acceptable. More serious objections apply to intentional germ line interventions because of the unacceptability of using a person solely as a vehicle for creating uncertain genetic change in his descendants. It (...) is also morally unacceptable to use the promise of future benefit to experiment on fetuses or embryos when other more effective technologies exist to help parents have healthy children. Using new genetic technologies to select desirable genotypes among gametes is less problematic and affords a promising new technique for avoiding intergenerational harms. Keywords: embryo research, germ line manipulation, intergenerational ethics, secondary germ line effects CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The Human Genome Project is an expensive, ambitious, and controversial attempt to locate and map every one of the approximately 100,000 genes in the human body. If it works, and we are able, for instance, to identify markers for genetic diseases long before they develop, who will have the right to obtain such information? What will be the consequences for health care, health insurance, employability, and research priorities? And, more broadly, how will attitudes toward human differences be affected, morally and (...) socially, by the setting of a genetic “standard”? The compatibility of individual rights and genetic fairness is challenged by the technological possibilities of the future, making it difficult to create an agenda for a “just genetics.” Beginning with an account of the utopian dreams and authoritarian tendencies of historical eugenics movements, this book’s nine essays probe the potential social uses and abuses of detailed genetic information. Lucid and wide-ranging, these contributions will interest bioethicists, legal scholars, and policy makers. Essays: “The Genome Project and the Meaning of Difference,” Timothy F. Murphy “Eugenics and the Human Genome Project: Is the Past Prologue?,” Daniel J. Kevles “Handle with Care: Race, Class, and Genetics,” Arthur L. Caplan “Public Choices and Private Choices: Legal Regulation of Genetic Testing,” Lori B. Andrews “Rules for Gene Banks: Protecting Privacy in the Genetics Age,” George J. Annas “Use of Genetic Information by Private Insurers,” Robert J. Pokorski “The Genome Project, Individual Differences, and Just Health Care,” Norman Daniels “Just Genetics: A Problem Agenda,” Leonard M. Fleck “Justice and the Limitations of Genetic Knowledge,” Marc A. Lappé. (shrink)

This article builds on feminist scholarship on new biologies and the body to describe the temporal politics of epigenetic research related to the human placenta. Drawing on interviews with scientists and observations at conferences and in laboratories, we argue that epigenetic research simultaneously positions placenta tissue as a way back into maternal and fetal bodies following birth, as a lens onto children’s future well-being, and as a bankable resource for ongoing research. Our findings reflect how developmental models of health have (...) helped recast the placenta as an agential organ that is uniquely responsive to environments during pregnancy and capable of embodying biological evidence about the effects of in utero experiences after birth. We develop the concept of ‘recursive embodiment’ to describe how placenta epigenetics is reimagining relationships between bodies and environments across developmental, epigenetic, and generational time, and the impacts this has for experiences of pregnancy and responsibilities related to children’s health. (shrink)

Within the next few years scientists will almost certainly have pieced together a broad map of the major gene locations on the twenty‐three human chromosomes. The rapid unfolding of this new knowledge raises new questions: What limits, if any, should be imposed on its acquisition? Who should control the wealth of resulting data? How should it be used? If, because of a deep‐seated need for certitude, many persons are likely to perceive a positive gene probe test as an indicator of (...) biologic destiny, probes may acquire a misleading status in our medical armamentarium. (shrink)

In The Ethics of Food, Gregory E. Pence brings together a collection of voices who share the view that the ethics of genetically modified food is among the most pressing societal questions of our time. This comprehensive collection addresses a broad range of subjects, including the meaning of food, moral analyses of vegetarianism and starvation, the safety and environmental risks of genetically modified food, issues of global food politics and the food industry, and the relationships among food, evolution, and human (...) history. (shrink)

Several US states are enacting 'right-to-die' laws, in the wake of the Karen Quinlan case. But the way such a law is drafted may cast doubt on a patient's existing common law right to control all aspects of his own treatment; it may give legal sanction to a lower standard of medical care that society at present expects from doctors; and it may lead to conflict between the patient's directive and his doctor's clinical judgement which cannot readily be resolved. The (...) laws themselves are categorised as a) legalising active killing or b) defining rights of patients to control treatment or c) assigning to others the rights to control treatment where the patient is not competent. The California law is discussed critically. The conclusion is that such legislation is not a satisfactory answer to the ethical problem of euthanasia. (shrink)

This groundbreaking book brings together the latest discoveries about the immune system in both Eastern and Western medicine to show how a balanced system can help strengthen the body.

This paper uses six policy problems in public health to illustrate the complexity of value considerations in decision-making, and derives an ethic for health protection policies based on the primacy of non-harming. In the first part, health policy is shown to require value considerations beyond simple utilitarianism. In the second, the author posits that much of health impairment can be traced to erosions of health outside the immediate control and consent of the individual. Accordingly, he argues that health impairing actions (...) on the part of others warrant strict regulations in spite of the paternalistic nature of such interventions. The priority for these interventions should be set along a gradient of vulnerability and autonomy, with the greatest hazards to non-consent giving persons warranting the greatest controls. Special attention to fetuses and developing infants is thereby justified, and actions which prevent harms are shown to have priority over those which mitigate harms, ameliorate their effects or promote good. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: The Gene Factory. By John Elkington. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. By Daniel J. Kevles. Broken Code: The Exploitation of DNA. By Marc Lappé.