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Publisher Summary This chapter reviews the ethical problems faced in genetic counseling. In modern genetic counseling, the information is provided based upon a presumed knowledge of the distinction between conditions that have major genetic determinants and those that apparently do not. There are at least two different settings in which genetic counseling may occur, which are distinguished by the way the counselee is motivated or brought to seek counseling. The first and best known category is the one that operates in standard medical practice. The lay counselor does not have the physician's obligation to the counselee as patient may well adopt the potential child as patient or focus on the potentially unfortunate couple or couples who may have had multiple involved children as patients. The couple with sickle-cell trait can only be certain of avoiding the birth of a child with sickle-cell anemia by not having natural children. Eliminating genes that determine disease might be beneficial from the disease standpoint but might not be beneficial from an adaptive point of view as the carrier status of the Tay–Sachs or sickle cell genes might confer benefits that are currently unknown. |
