Face facts: why human genetics will always provoke bioethics.

Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, June, 2004 by Eric T. Juengst

Over the last decade, more U.S. taxpayers' money has been spent trying to anticipate and address the bioethical issues raised by advances in human genetics than any other set of issues in the field. (1) Does this make sense? Not everyone in bioethics thinks so. Some think there are more important topics, like issues of health care justice, that will be neglected if the field continues to follow the money to dwell on the moral challenges of a relatively small community of research scientists. (2) Others decry "genetic exceptionalism" as inappropriately singling out this scientific enterprise for criticism and regulation, when the same issues are faced even more acutely in other parts of the biomedical world. (3) Human genetics is not accelerating as fast as pharmacology, for...