Hastings Cent Rep. 2018 Jul;48 Suppl 2(Suppl 2):S14-S15. doi: 10.1002/hast.877.
As new parents quickly learn, parenting always involves choosing your battles. Ideally, parents have the freedom to make those moral choices without the prejudice of an unreasonable or premature inflicted ought. Resolving the predictive uncertainties of genomic information is the professional responsibility of the biomedical community, just as clarifying the impact of global warming or assessing the risks of rising multidrug resistance is the responsibility of similar specialists. Until sequencing can give parents clear and meaningful information that they can use to protect their children without also burdening parents with uncertain findings about which little if anything can be done, it makes no sense to impute an obligation for them to seek it out. To do so not only increases the mental and emotional burden on parents but also distorts the scope of parental responsibility in ways that undermine parents' capacity to play their immediate role as the nurturers of a new life.
作为新手父母很快就会了解到，育儿总是需要做出选择。理想情况下，父母应该在没有不合理或过早施加的义务的偏见下，自由地做出这些道德选择。解决基因组信息预测不确定性是生物医学界的专业责任，就像澄清全球变暖的影响或评估抗药性日益增强的风险是类似专家的责任一样。在测序能够为父母提供明确且有意义的信息，使他们能够在不使父母承受不确定发现的负担的情况下保护孩子之前，没有理由要求他们去寻求这种信息。这样做不仅会增加父母的精神和情感负担，而且还会以破坏父母作为新生命养育者的直接角色的能力的方式扭曲父母责任的范围。
