Future Perfect - Hardcover

Andrews, Lori

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231121628 ISBN 13: 9780231121620

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2001

Synopsis

Genetic technologies have moved off the pages of science fiction and into our everyday lives. Internists now offer genetic testing for cancers and early coronary disease. Obstetricians make genetic predictions during pregnancy about a baby's future health. Even dentists are getting into the act, offering testing for a genetic propensity to peridontal disease. In this pathbreaking book, Lori Andrews provides the first detailed glimpse into how genetic testing can change your self-image, your relationships with loved ones, and your expectations about your children. She documents how ill prepared doctors are to deal with complex genetic issues. Andrews also uncovers the ways in which employers, insurers, schools, and courts have discriminated against people on the basis of their genetic make up. She traces the legal case history of genetics litigation and legislation and describes the ethical and social protections that need to be in place so that the Human Genome Project does not lead us directly toward Brave New World.

In Future Perfect, Lori Andrews offers a new plan for making decisions as individuals and as a society based on emerging issues of ethics and science. Who should have access to your personal genetic information? Should genetic treatments be used to enhance characteristics such as intelligence in "normal" individuals? Should gene therapy be undertaken on embryos, changing their genetic inheritance, as well as that of future generations? If a woman learns she has a genetic mutation predisposing her to breast cancer, does she have a moral or even a legal duty to share that information with an estranged relative? Andrews considers the answer to these and many other questions that have profound implications for health care providers, medical organizations, social institutions, legislatures, courts, and ordinary people.

About this title

Book Description:

Andrews offers a new plan for making decisions as individuals and as a society based on emerging issues of ethics and science by providing the first detailed glimpse into how genetic testing can change your self-image, your relationships with loved ones, and your expectations about your children.

From the Inside Flap:

What you need to know about genetic testing

Will genetic testing make you healthier?

"The physiological and psychological harm from increased stress may offset any benefit of increased surveillance. . . . Moreover even when a treatment is offered to a presymptomatic individual, that treatment . . . brings its own physical and psychological risks." (p. 42)

What does a positive test result really tell you?

"If a disease has a one in 15,000 incidence and the test for it is 99.9 percent accurate, with a 0.1 percent false-positive rate, that means there will be fifteen false positives for each true positive." (p. 109)

Should your doctor help you decide?

"Physicians have a much different view of particular disabilities than do people with those disabilities. When asked to evaluate the quality of their lives, 80 percent of doctors said pretty good, but 82 percent indicated that their quality of life would be pretty low if they had quadriplegia. In contrast, 80 percent of people with quadriplegia rated the quality of their lives as pretty good." (p. 104)

Will the government protect you?

"Academic, government, hospital, and commercial laboratories are not marketing tests but are using their own ingredients, known in the trade as ‘home brews.“ And the FDA has not aggressively regulated home brews - even though they are being used in tests that are sold to patients who then make crucial decisions, such as whether to have surgery or an abortion, based on the results. . . . Of the 43 biotech companies and 215 not-for-profit organizations that used 'home brew“ genetic testing and responded to the survey, only 15.6 percent had contacted the FDA." (p. 113)

How effective is gene therapy?

"By March 2000, more than four thousand patients had participated in gene therapy experiments. No studies found clear benefits from any type of gene therapy being tested." (p. 127)

What will happen to insurance policies?

"As genetic technologies identify which currently healthy people will later develop which particular diseases, insurance companies have been charging exorbitant amounts to people predicted to be at genetic risk, or denying them coverage entirely. . . . Since each of us has at least five genetic defects, everyone could become uninsurable." (pp. 134-135)

About this edition

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0231121628
• ISBN 13: 9780231121620
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288