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Commentary: Risks and Benefits, Testing and Screening, Cancer, Genes and Dollars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Eric Kodish
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Extract

The ability to determine genetic predisposition to cancer represents an opportunity to expand cancer control efforts in a manner that was previously unimaginable. This possibility also forces individual patients, families, health care professionals, and society to confront difficult questions about genetic knowledge. Although genetic testing or screening for cancer risk may hold promise of cancer control benefits, this prospect also raises significant ethical and legal concerns that must inform and shape policy decisions. In “Cancer Genetic Susceptibility Testing,” Benjamin Wilfond and the Cancer Genetic Screening Consortium (CGSC) present a status report and an ambitious agenda for future examination of ethical and policy issues in this embryonic field. The paper provides a provocative and timely discussion of some extremely vexing issues, but it also misses on several critical points.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , Winter 1997 , pp. 252 - 255
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1997

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