engleski

Bioethics and Genetics: Current view on Genetic counseling

Medical genetics, the science of human biological variations related to health and disease, is an inevitable part of modern medical practice. The specificity of hereditary diseases comes from the fact that they, for now, cannot be cured, but can be prevented, and with the proper medical and psychological support the quality of life can be improved. The rapid and constant advances in human genetics, as well as the possibility of prenatal and postnatal genetic analysis of various physical and psychological features, predisposition to diseases, and genetic modification of humans, opens numerous bioethical questions considering that medical genetics is developing faster than law regulations and public opinion. The human species hasn't precisely determined whether its priority is to „ shape“ new generations according to the will of their parents, or to create a society which is prepared for „ less perfect“ individuals. It is obvious that through the sofisticated alleviation of human „ imperfection“ – that is, through selection of values of human life according to hereditary features – we are returning to the old eugenics through a new approach. In this way we are alienating our progress from the basic bioethical concept of rescpecting the dignity of every human being regardless of its genetical qualities. As the progress of medicine has enabled the follow-up of health status since conception, the parents face an increasead pressure of a having a child with genetic burdeon. The important question is how will these progresses in biomedical sciences affect the will of maintaing one's pregnancy and future conceptions. Genetic predisposition to diseases represents a life-long risk factor which often affects familiy relations and quality of life, including development of depression, tension and anxiety, or the loss of spouse. Although the availability of more information and more possibilites, including the selection of embryos with favourable „ gene maps“ and with decreased risk of hereditary diseases, should facilitate important decisions (from personal to social level), the rapid development of genetics makes the unsolved questions become even more complex. This also leads to the problem of basic human rights of the „ less perfect“ concepts in relation to the collective „ evolutionary imperative“ of constant improvement of human species. The increasing number of hereditary diseases, as well as the increasing interest of medical profession on the role of new genetics in health and disease, emphasises the importance of genetic counselling, which is a lifelong process of providing professional and scientific genetic informations, with significant bioethical, leagal and social implications. Due to its distinctive social and psychological importance for an individual or a family, and with it for the society, it is appropriate to say that genetic counselling is also bioethical. This is why bioethics, in its interdisciplinarity, represents a „ bridge“ between medical/ethical principles and genetic practice in extremely technologized clinical circumstances. At the same time, the initiation of premature ethical discussions raises the question on the ethics of the discussions themselves due to the fact that they are not based on the competent and detailed knowledge of the problems in medical genetics.

medical genetics; genetic information; genetic counselling; bioethics; eugenics

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