Showing results for "Genetics" in Medicine & Health Care Industry

Breakthroughs in genetics present us with a promise and a predicament. The promise is that we will soon be able to treat and prevent a host of debilitating diseases. The predicament is that our newfound genetic knowledge may enable us to manipulate our nature - to enhance our genetic traits and those of our children. Although most people find at least some forms of genetic engineering disquieting, it is not easy to articulate why.

Since 2010, it has been possible to determine a person's genetic makeup in a matter of days at an accessible cost for many millions of people. Along with this technological breakthrough there has emerged a movement to use this information to help prospective parents "eliminate preventable genetic disease". As the prospect of systematically excluding the appearance of unwanted mutations in our children comes within reach, David B. Goldstein examines the possible consequences from these types of choices.

A revelatory account of how power, politics, and greed have placed the unfulfilled promise of personalized medicine at the center of American medicine The United States is embarking on a medical revolution. Supporters of personalized, or precision, medicine—the tailoring of health care to our...

A vibrant young Hispano woman, Shonnie Medina, inherits a breast-cancer mutation known as BRCA1.185delAG. It is a genetic variant characteristic of Jews. The Medinas knew they were descended from Native Americans and Spanish Catholics, but they did not know that they had Jewish ancestry as well. The mutation most likely sprang from Sephardic Jews hounded by the Spanish Inquisition. The discovery of the gene leads to a fascinating investigation of cultural history and modern genetics by Dr. Harry Ostrer and other experts on the DNA of Jewish populations.

In Mercies in Disguise, acclaimed New York Times reporter and best-selling author Gina Kolata tells the story of the Baxleys, an upstanding family in small-town South Carolina. Many of them were doctors, but still, they are struck down by an inscrutable illness. Finally they discover the cause of the disease after a remarkable sequence of providential events. Meanwhile science, progressing for 50 years along a parallel track, handed the Baxleys a question - not a cure but a blood test that would reveal who had the gene for the disease.

Already technology enables parents to select some genetic traits for their children, and soon it will be possible to begin to shape ourselves as a species. Countering loud cries of alarm, bioethics expert Ronald Green explains why our fears about genetic engineering are overblown and how we can move forward responsibly to create a better future.

In the new essays collected here, an interdisciplinary group of scholars asks age-old questions about the nature and well-being of humans in the context of a revolutionary new biotechnology - one that has the potential to change the genetic make-up of both existing people and future generations. Welcoming listeners who study related issues and those not yet familiar with the formal study of bioethics, the authors of these essays open up a conversation about the ethics of gene editing.