FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY IN GENETIC TESTING
Baruch A.
Brody
a1
a1 Philosophy and Medicine, Rice University
and Baylor College of Medicine
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Public statements by various international groups emphasize
that decisions to undergo genetic screening, either for
disease-carrier status or for predisposition-to-disease status,
and decisions about the use of the resulting information should
be made voluntarily by the party to be screened. For example,
the World Medical Association, in its Declaration on the Human
Genome Project, says, “One should respect the will of
persons screened and their right to decide about participation
and about the use of the information obtained.” Giving
this principle a name, “voluntarism,” the Council for
International Organizations of Medical Sciences, in its Declaration
of Inuyama (the host city for the conference), announced that
“voluntarism should be the guiding principle in the provision
of genetic services.
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