Gerard Susan, Hayes Maxine, Rothstein Mark A
Washington State Department of Health, Olympia, Washington, USA.
J Law Med Ethics. 2002 Fall;30(3 Suppl):173-6.
The project to map the human genome and the field of genetics in general offer unique opportunities for not only clinical medicine, but also for public health to address and prevent disease. At the same time, genomics is fraught with ethical challenges, not the least of which is how to prevent misuse and abuse of genetic information by virtue of the legal powers conferred on public health organizations. This article examines the role that public health can perform in the 21st Century in using the knowledge gained from the human genome project, including how to address the barriers to widespread application. The article also examines the challenges facing public health in dealing with the legal and ethical issues arising from genomics and in avoiding misapplication. While the opportunities that genomics offers public health agencies are unprecedented, so too are the challenges, which include the fact that genomics exists within a legal and policy paradigm that is the opposite of the one in which public health has traditionally existed. The danger of abuse and misuse, therefore, is very real.
绘制人类基因组图谱的项目以及遗传学领域总体上不仅为临床医学，也为公共卫生应对和预防疾病提供了独特机遇。与此同时，基因组学充满了伦理挑战，其中最主要的挑战之一是如何凭借赋予公共卫生组织的法定权力防止遗传信息的滥用和误用。本文探讨了公共卫生在21世纪利用从人类基因组计划获得的知识方面可以发挥的作用，包括如何应对广泛应用的障碍。文章还研究了公共卫生在处理基因组学引发的法律和伦理问题以及避免不当应用方面所面临的挑战。虽然基因组学为公共卫生机构提供的机遇是前所未有的，但挑战也是如此，其中包括基因组学存在于一种与公共卫生传统上所处的法律和政策范式相反的范式之中。因此，滥用和误用的危险是非常现实的。
