‘Once You Have a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail’

Abstract

The reports in 1993 that scientists located a gene linked to homosexuality is only one in a growing list of 'finds' over the last few years associating genes with diseases and non-desease states. My personal favourite was the headling 'Faulty genes lead to old age'. The dramatic increase in the number and range of genetic tests designed to screen embryos, fetuses, children and adults for inherited or congenital disorders, and for predispositions to complex conditions such as cancers or asbestosis, which is caused by exposure to asbestos especially in work setting: all of these point to the expanding scope of genetic screening. A number of areas of concern have been identified with the expansion of medical genetics, and they have become almost common sense. Concrete proposals have been forthcoming to address these concerns. I would like to start off by presenting some of these to you, but then use them as a springboard to reflect on some of the 'ethics of relationships' which are implicit in them, a phrase I have borrowed from the medical social worker Ida Pruitt whose understanding of things Chinese was rivalled only by her understanding of things Western.