This is the revised edition of the casebook, Genetics: Ethics, Law, and Policy, which has been used successfully in law schools in both the seminar and course context. It is authored by three of the nation's leading experts on genetic ethics, law and policy. Students enjoy the course because of the topicality of the subjects, many of which they hear about in the news (gene discoveries, embryo stem cell research). Faculty members enjoy teaching from the book because of the excellent teaching manual and because they can link it to other topics ? the casebook covers issues in health law, employment law, insurance law, criminal law, family law, and other fields. The casebook is supplemented regularly on the TWEN website, so that it is always current. A background in genetics is not required for either students or teachers. The casebook and teachers? manual are written so that the casebook can be used for undergraduate courses or courses for the health professions, for public health, or for public policy.

Mark Taylor demonstrates how research using genetic data can be reconciled with proper privacy protection.

Raising hopes for disease treatment and prevention, but also the specter of discrimination and "designer genes," genetic testing is potentially one of the most socially explosive developments of our time. This book presents a current assessment of this rapidly evolving field, offering principles for actions and research and recommendations on key issues in genetic testing and screening. Advantages of early genetic knowledge are balanced with issues associated with such knowledge: availability of treatment, privacy and discrimination, personal decision-making, public health objectives, cost, and more. Among the important issues covered: Quality control in genetic testing. Appropriate roles for public agencies, private health practitioners, and laboratories. Value-neutral education and counseling for persons considering testing. Use of test results in insurance, employment, and other settings.

The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Health Law addresses some of the most critical issues facing scholars, legislators, and judges today: how to protect against threats to public health that can quickly cross national borders, how to ensure access to affordable health care, and how to regulate the pharmaceutical industry, among many others. When matters of life and death literally hang in the balance, it is especially important for policymakers to get things right, and the making of policy can be greatly enhanced by learning from the successes and failures of approaches taken in other countries. Where there are "common challenges" in law and health, there is much to be gained from experiences elsewhere. Thus, for example, countries that suffered early from the COVID-19 pandemic provided valuable lessons about public health interventions for countries that were hit later. Accordingly, the Handbook considers key health law questions from a comparative perspective. In health law, common challenges are frequent. In addition to ones already mentioned, there are questions about addressing the social determinants of health (e.g., poverty and pollution), organizing health systems to optimize use of available resources, ensuring that physicians provide care of the highest quality, protecting patient privacy in a data-driven world, and properly balancing patient autonomy with the interest in preserving life when reproductive and end-of-life decisions are made. This Handbook's wide scope and comparative take on health law are particularly timely. Economic globalization has made it increasingly important for different countries to harmonize their legal rules. Students, practitioners, scholars, and policymakers need to understand how health laws vary across national boundaries and how reforms can ensure a convergence toward an optimal set of legal rules, or ensure that specific legal arrangements are needed in particular contexts. Indeed, comparative analysis has become essential for legal scholars, and The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Health Law is the only resource that provides such an analysis in health law.

This text collates and examines the jurisprudence that currently exists in respect of blood-tied genetic connection, arguing that the right to identity often rests upon the ability to identify biological ancestors, which in turn requires an absence of adult-centric veto norms. It looks firstly to the nature and purpose of the blood-tie as a unique item of birthright heritage, whose socio-cultural value perhaps lies mainly in preventing, or perhaps engendering, a feared or revered sense of ‘otherness.’ It then traces the evolution of the various policies on ‘telling’ and accessing truth, tying these to the diverse body of psychological theories on the need for unbroken attachments and the harms of being origin deprived. The ‘law’ of the blood-tie comprises of several overlapping and sometimes conflicting strands: the international law provisions and UNCRC Country Reports on the child’s right to identity, recent Strasbourg case law, and domestic case law from a number of jurisdictions on issues such as legal parentage, vetoes on post-adoption contact, court-delegated decision-making, overturned placements and the best interests of the relinquished child. The text also suggests a means of preventing the discriminatory effects of denied ancestry, calling upon domestic jurists, legislators, policy-makers and parents to be mindful of the long-term effects of genetic ‘kinlessness’ upon origin deprived persons, especially where they have been tasked with protecting this vulnerable section of the population.

Examines the ethical, legal, and regulatory challenges presented as genomics become commonplace, easily available consumer products.

Public health has become an essential area of focus in terms of the way it operates, the services offered, policies, and more. Maintaining an effective public health system and infrastructure, updated and useful policies, and health literacy are primary concerns. A critical analysis of public healthcare policy and services is critical to accommodate the changing health demands of the global population. Through a deeper understanding of the way public health services are offered, a look into policymaking and current policies in healthcare, and the way health literacy and health education are promoted, the current state and future of public health are acknowledged. The Research Anthology on Public Health Services, Policies, and Education presents a view of public health through an analysis of healthcare services and delivery; policies in terms of policymaking, ethics, and governance; as well as the way society is educated on public health affairs. The chapters will cover a wide range of issues such as healthcare policy, health literacy, healthcare reform, accessibility, public welfare, and more. This book is essential for public health officials, government officials, policymakers, teachers, medical professionals, health agencies and organizations, professionals, researchers, academics, practitioners, and students interested in the current state of public health and the improvement of public health services and policies for the future.

Dorothy Wertz and John Fletcher pioneered the first international study of ethical and social issues in genetics in 18 nations. This book reports and discusses their second and more representative study in 36 nations. The survey focused on actual situations that occur in the practice of medical genetics, presented as case vignettes that can also be used in teaching and policy discussion. Among the issues discussed are privacy, prenatal diagnosis, patient autonomy, directiveness in counseling, sex selection, forensic DNA banking, "genetic discrimination," and "eugenics". This is Dorothy Wertz's final book, as she died in April, 2003. It is a one of a kind cross-cultural study of complex ethical issues in the uses of genetic information. No one else has attempted to look at the international aspects of medical genetics on such a broad scale. The results provide a resource for discussion both within and among nations. Much bioethical and policy discussion now occurs in an information vacuum. The survey showed that what people would do, and their reasons for doing it, differed considerably from what ethicists think they "should" do. Many will be surprised at the results, especially in nations where bioethical discussion is just beginning. Genetics and Ethics in Global Perspective is of interest to medical geneticists, genetic counselors, social scientists and anthropologists who study cross-cultural issues, bioethicists and bioethics centers and health policy makers.

Our genetic markers have come to be regarded as portals to the past. Analysis of these markers is increasingly used to tell the story of human migration; to investigate and judge issues of social membership and kinship; to rewrite history and collective memory; to right past wrongs and to arbitrate legal claims and human rights controversies; and to open new thinking about health and well-being. At the same time, in many societies genetic evidence is being called upon to perform a kind of racially charged cultural work: to repair the racial past and to transform scholarly and popular opinion about the “nature” of identity in the present. Genetics and the Unsettled Past considers the alignment of genetic science with commercial genealogy, with legal and forensic developments, and with pharmaceutical innovation to examine how these trends lend renewed authority to biological understandings of race and history. This unique collection brings together scholars from a wide range of disciplines—biology, history, cultural studies, law, medicine, anthropology, ethnic studies, sociology—to explore the emerging and often contested connections among race, DNA, and history. Written for a general audience, the book’s essays touch upon a variety of topics, including the rise and implications of DNA in genealogy, law, and other fields; the cultural and political uses and misuses of genetic information; the way in which DNA testing is reshaping understandings of group identity for French Canadians, Native Americans, South Africans, and many others within and across cultural and national boundaries; and the sweeping implications of genetics for society today.