Refolo Pietro, Ferracuti Stefano, Grassi Simone, Raimondi Costanza, Mercuri Giulia, Zedda Massimo, Aulino Giovanni, Spagnolo Antonio Gioacchino, Oliva Antonio
Department of Health Care Surveillance and Bioethics, Section of Bioethics and Medical Humanities, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy.
Research Centre for Clinical Bioethics and Medical Humanities, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy.
Front Genet. 2025 May 13;16:1599750. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2025.1599750. eCollection 2025.
The use of genetic predictions of aggressive behavior in the criminal justice system remains a subject of ongoing debate. Since behavioral genetic evidence is often used in criminal defense arguments, it is crucial to critically examine the ethical challenges associated with its application.
This article seeks to identify and analyze these ethical concerns to ensure the responsible and equitable integration of genetic testing, when deemed necessary, into the judiciary system.
A systematic review was conducted using PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus, supplemented by manual searches of reference lists to identify additional relevant studies.
The search yielded 1,023 publications, 12 of which met the inclusion criteria. Seven key ethical concerns were identified: the risks of discrimination, stigmatization, eugenic reasoning, deterministic interpretations, overestimation of dangerousness, privacy violations, and medicalization, along with the risks posed by limited scientific literacy among legal professionals.
The ethical challenges associated with genetic predictions of aggressive behavior underscore the need for a critical and multidisciplinary approach to their use in the criminal justice system. Collaboration among bioethicists, legal scholars, scientists, and communication experts is crucial to prevent misuse and reduce potential biases. Such an approach will help ensure that genetic insights are ethically applied, accurately interpreted, and used to promote justice rather than exacerbate systemic inequalities.
在刑事司法系统中使用攻击性行为的基因预测仍是一个持续争论的话题。由于行为遗传学证据常被用于刑事辩护论证，审慎审视其应用所带来的伦理挑战至关重要。
本文旨在识别并分析这些伦理问题，以确保在必要时将基因检测以负责任且公平的方式纳入司法系统。
使用PubMed、科学网和Scopus进行系统综述，并辅以手动检索参考文献列表以识别其他相关研究。
检索共得到1023篇出版物，其中12篇符合纳入标准。确定了七个关键的伦理问题：歧视风险、污名化、优生学推理、决定论解释、对危险性的高估、侵犯隐私、医学化，以及法律专业人员科学素养有限所带来的风险。
与攻击性行为基因预测相关的伦理挑战凸显了在刑事司法系统中对其使用采取批判性和多学科方法的必要性。生物伦理学家、法律学者、科学家和传播专家之间的合作对于防止滥用和减少潜在偏见至关重要。这种方法将有助于确保基因见解在伦理上得到应用、准确解释，并用于促进正义而非加剧系统性不平等。
