Is there anything special about genetic tests? : genetic essentialism and information

Abstract

Innovation in medicine almost always creates feelings of moral unease; especially in religiously oriented countries. Evidence to this are technologies such as those of organ transplantation in the 1950s and assisted procreation in the 1970s. Medical Genetics and the investment in the Human Genome Project has created the concern that we may tamper with the very essence of life - our DNA. Whilst on the one hand medicine strives to cure genetic ailments such as Tay Sachs disease, Sickle cell anaemia and Huntington's disease, the prospects of genetics go much further and reach into the realm of enhancement and cloning. Having genetic information at our disposal, can itself affect our very essence by giving us the opportunity to choose who will live or die, and possibly by fostering new eugenic attitudes. But medicine, by its very nature, has always thwarted the natural order. In this light it is appropriate to ask whether there is anything special about genetic tests and whether this follows directly from genetic essentialism.