The framework presented by Bayefsky and Berkman is based on having clear and accurate genetic information to offer parents, for them to either decide to prepare for birth or to terminate the...

The twentieth-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger distinguished “meditative” and “calculative” modes of thinking as a way of highlighting the problematique of modern technology and the limits of modern science. In doing so he also was prescient to recognize, in 1955, that the most significant danger to the future of humanity are developments in molecular biology and biotechnology, in contrast to the post-World War global threat of thermonuclear weapons. These insights are engaged here in view of recent discussion of the need (...) for international regulation of heritable human genome editing and the announcement in 2018 of the birth of the world’s first gene-edited babies in China. Heidegger’s call for meditative thinking requires modern medicine and the life sciences to appropriate the phenomenological conception of the human “way to be” such that it is not restricted to the “present-at-hand” physiology and pathology of the human body. (shrink)

The day has arrived that genetic tests for educational outcomes are available to the public. Today parents and students alike can send off a sample of blood or saliva and receive a ‘genetic report’ for a range of characteristics relevant to education, including intelligence, math ability, reading ability, and educational attainment. DTC availability is compounded by a growing “precision education” initiative, which proposes the application of DNA tests in schools to tailor educational curricula to children’s genomic profiles. Here I argue (...) that these happenings are a strong signal of the geneticization of education; the process by which educational abilities and outcomes come to be examined, understood, explained, and treated as primarily genetic characteristics. I clarify what it means to geneticize education, highlight the nature and limitations of the underlying science, explore both real and potential downstream bioethical implications, and make proposals for mitigating negative impacts. (shrink)

Background The convergence of neuroscience, genomics, and data science holds promise to unveil the neurobiology of psychosis and to produce new ways of preventing, diagnosing, and treating psychotic illness. Yet, moral challenges arise in neurobiological research and in the clinical translation of research findings. This article investigates the views of relevant actors in mental health on the moral challenges of accessing neurobiological information in the context of psychosis. Methods Semi-structured individual interviews with two groups: researchers employed in the National Health (...) Service (NHS) or a university in England (n = 14), and mental health professionals employed in NHS mental health services (n = 14). This article compares results in the two groups (total n = 28). Results This article presents findings around three conceptual areas: (1) research ethics as mostly unproblematic, (2) psychosis, neurobiological information, and mental health care, and (3) identity, relationships, and the future. These areas are drawn from the themes and topics that emerged in the interviews across the two groups of participants. Researchers and health professionals provided similar accounts of the moral challenges of accessing—which includes acquisition, communication, and use of—neurobiological information in the context of psychosis. Acquiring neurobiological information was perceived as mostly unproblematic, provided ethical safeguards are put in place. Conversely, participants argued that substantive moral challenges arise from how neurobiological information is delivered—that is, communicated and used—in research and in clinical care. Neurobiological information was seen as a powerful tool in the process through which individuals define their identity and establish personal and clinical goals. The pervasiveness of this narrative tool may influence researchers and health professionals’ perception of ethical principles and moral obligations. Conclusions This study suggests that the moral challenges that arise from accessing neurobiological information in the context of psychosis go beyond traditional research and clinical ethics concerns. Reflecting on how accessing neurobiological information can influence individual self-narratives will be vital to ensure the ethical translation of neuroscience and genomics into mental health. Trial registration The study did not involve a health care intervention on human participants. It was retrospectively registered on 11 July 2018, registration number: researchregistry4255. (shrink)

In the last third of the twentieth century, humanists and social scientists argued that attention to genetics would heighten already‐existing genetic determinism, which in turn would intensify negative social outcomes, especially sexism, racism, ableism, and harshness to criminals. They assumed that laypeople are at risk of becoming genetic essentialists. I will call this the “laypeople are genetic essentialists model.” This model has not accurately predicted psychosocial impacts of findings from genetics research. I will be arguing that the failure of the (...) model can be traced to its inability to recognize the complexity of laypeople’s attitudes; its incorrect theory of how beliefs, attitudes, and discourse function; and its blindness to how academics’ own interests can override the available evidence. More specifically, I suggest that the substantial data about laypeople’s deployment of genetics supports what I will call the “laypeople are strategic essentialists model” better than the “laypeople are genetic essentialists model.” The strategic essentialists model holds that people tend to store multiple categories, including multiple causal forces, that they deploy “strategically” to serve context‐dependent goals. It will be difficult for academics to reorient ourselves to model laypeople as sophisticated strategic essentialists rather than as naïve genetic essentialists. Perhaps a little shift, however, will be of value. (shrink)