What Is So Unfair about Using Genetic Information?
What Is So Unfair about Using Genetic Information?

Summary/Abstract: New discoveries in human genetic technology have a signifi cant impact on society and open up new perspectives in medicine. Genetic information provides the ability to diagnose or predict genetic conditions for the risks of illness and may bring about signifi cant benefi ts to health care in the future. However, the use of genetic information poses daunting questions and great challenges to public health care and our legal systems. One of the most demanding issues of the integration of new genetic technologies into medicine is the challenge of equality. The second biggest issue is the problem of the protection of patients’ autonomy and privacy in the age of genomic medicine, especially when genetic information can be used and misused for miscellaneous purposes. Both of the above mentioned concerns are based on a common social fear – the fear of genetic discrimination that has stimulated legislators of many countries to pass special laws guaranteeing genetic privacy or preventing people from genetic discrimination in such fi elds as the insurance system and employment. In the present essay I shall discuss some of the issues concerned with the problem of genetic discrimination. I shall present what genetic discrimination means and how it can manifest itself. I shall also discuss the main controversies that arise when the law preventing genetic discrimination is at stake.

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