8.4.9 Genetic Counselling & Personalised Medicine

Personalised medicine

• Personalised medicine involves the development of more targeted drugs to treat a variety of human diseases as well as the development of synthetic tissues
• Information gathered from genome projects like the Human Genome Project (HGP) can be used to develop genomic medicine
  • Genomic medicine uses information about an individuals genes to influence their clinical care

• Genetic screening allows for individuals with a high chance of developing specific diseases to be identified and for preventative measures or precautions to be taken

• Although genetic screening has a wide range of potential benefits, there are also potential disadvantages of this technology and its use has been questioned by many people who believe it to be potentially dangerous or unethical

Arguments For Genetic Screening

• Screening for certain conditions can enable people to make sensible lifestyle choices to reduce the chances of the disease developing
  • For example, if you are found to be genetically predisposed to getting cancer or developing heart disease, you can decide to eat a healthy diet and to refrain from smoking in order to reduce the chances of these diseases developing

• Screening enables potential parents to choose whether or not to have their own biological children, as they may not want to risk passing on a harmful allele
• Screening enables people to participate in research and clinical trials, which are critical for developing the understanding of and treatments for genetic disorders

Arguments Against Genetic Screening

• Screening people for an incurable disease or one that develops in later life may not be beneficial as there may be nothing positive that can be done in response to this information, potentially leading to the person becoming depressed or scared
• This may also lead to someone having to pay a higher price for life insurance (which they may not be able to afford) than other people
• Some people fear that screening may lead to a form of genetic discrimination against individuals with defective or disease-causing alleles (which may be seen by some people as being "inferior", although this is not the case and no-one should ever be seen as being genetically inferior)
  • In addition, parents found to have a high chance of passing on harmful alleles may be unfairly pressured into not having children

• Some people fear that screening may one day be used to look more broadly at the genetic make-up of a potential child (i.e. not just focusing on the risks of genetic disorders developing), which could eventually lead to potential parents making reproductive decisions such as aborting foetuses that do not have the desired genetics
  • This idea of 'designer babies' becoming a possibility in the future raises many ethical questions

• Some religions consider such interferences with the natural process of reproduction to be highly immoral