Lecture: Thesis on an ethics of genetic testing

Master data
Title: Thesis on an ethics of genetic testing
Description: Recent developments in human genetics subvert the possibility of defining central ethical terms in familiar ways: the notion of responsibility, the principles of autonomy, voluntariness and informed consent as well as the relationship between practical problems and ethical theory building need to be rethought. In this paper I try to substantiate this hypothesis and, furthermore, to sketch some consequences following from these arguments. In doing so, I plead for an inductive approach which takes the concrete situation of those affected as a starting point. The event in which the most tangible ethical problems arise in the context of human genetics is genetic testing. Genetic counselling – as required for genetic testing – is a situation in which these problems come to the fore. It is not the self-image of mankind that is negotiated during the counselling conversation, but it is the relation between self and body that is being outlined in its paradox character. At the same time, this paradox becomes the starting point for an alternative notion of responsibility. The notion of responsibility becomes radicalised to the extent to which shaping replaces prevention as a leading concept in the field of human genetics. As a result of such an alternative notion of responsibility, ethical problems are henceforth distributed across networks, structures and organisations. Consequently, a need for an ethics of distributed responsibility can be concluded.
Keywords:
Type: Registered lecture
Homepage: http://www.ifz.tugraz.at/index.php/article/articlereview/1150/1/80
Event: International Symposium on Genetic Testing (Graz)
Date: 03.10.2008
lecture status:

Participants
Wilhelm Berger
Wilhelm.Berger@aau.at
Research activities
To visiting card
(internal)
  • Speaker

Assignment
Organisation Address
Fakultät für Sozialwissenschaften
  Institut für Technik- und Wissenschaftsforschung
B07b (LS) / Universitätsstraße 65-67
9020 Klagenfurt am Wörthersee
Austria
   andrea.lassnig@aau.at
https://www.aau.at/sts/
To organisation
B07b (LS) / Universitätsstraße 65-67
AT - 9020  Klagenfurt am Wörthersee

Categorisation
Subject areas
  • 5912 - Social sciences (interdisciplinary)
Research Cluster No research Research Cluster selected
Focus of lecture
  • Science to Science (Quality indicator: n.a.)
Classification raster of the assigned organisational units:
Group of participants No group of participants selected
Published?
  • No
working groups No working group selected

Cooperations
No partner organisations selected