Ethics when genotype under-determines clinical phenotype

Abstract

"Genetic analysis and its application to human diseases are still in their infancy. But more genes are being discovered all the time for diagnosis and treatment. These identify the risk of disease but present ethical dilemmas, which require speedy resolution to keep up with advancing technological processes. Our laboratory has done routine work on trinucleotide repeat diseases as well as DNA polymorphism and infectious disease, as shown in Table 1. Technological problems that required resolution included; 1) expensive reagents and laborious techniques for DNA extraction; and 2) contamination of PCR amplification and labile quality control."