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.

This timely work brings together a group of the nation's leading experts in genetics, medicine, history of science, health, law, philosophy of science, and medical ethics to assess the current state of modern human genetics, and to begin to chart the legal and ethical guidelines needed to prevent the misuse of human genetics from leading to the abuse of human beings. The six sections of the book, read together, map the social policy con tours of modern human genetics. The first part describes the science of the Human Genome Project. The second addresses specific social policy implications, including the relevance of recombinant DNA history, the eugenics legacy, military applications, and issues of race and class in the context of genetic discrimination. Broader philosophical issues, including reductionism and determinism, the concept of disease, and using germline gene therapy to "improve" human beings are discussed in the third part.

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

When DNA profiling was first introduced into the American legal system in 1987, it was heralded as a technology that would revolutionize law enforcement. As an investigative tool, it has lived up to much of this hype—it is regularly used to track down unknown criminals, put murderers and rapists behind bars, and exonerate the innocent. Yet, this promise took ten turbulent years to be fulfilled. In Genetic Witness, Jay D. Aronson uncovers the dramatic early history of DNA profiling that has been obscured by the technique’s recent success. He demonstrates that robust quality control and quality assurance measures were initially nonexistent, interpretation of test results was based more on assumption than empirical evidence, and the technique was susceptible to error at every stage. Most of these issues came to light only through defense challenges to what prosecutors claimed to be an infallible technology. Although this process was fraught with controversy, inefficiency, and personal antagonism, the quality of DNA evidence improved dramatically as a result. Aronson argues, however, that the dream of a perfect identification technology remains unrealized.

The issue of rights to genetic information is considered in this study from the standpoint of individuals, their relatives, employers, insurers and the state. Graeme Laurie provides a concept of privacy and property rights for the person, and argues for stronger legal protection following new developments in genetics. This book will interest lawyers, philosophers and doctors concerned with genetic information and issues of privacy, as well as genetic counselors, researchers and policy makers worldwide for its practical position on dilemmas in modern genetic medicine.