Publications

Some argue that human groups have a stake in the outcome of population-genomics research and that the decision to participate in such research should therefore be subject to group permission. It is not possible, however, to obtain prior group permission, because the actual human groups under study, human demes, are...

As the international effort to map the human genome matures, scientific interest in using that map to evaluate the genetic differences among human groups is growing. It recently has become popular (and politically important) to argue that this new interest in what might be called “population genomics” puts at risk...

As science learns more about how the brain works, and fails to work, the possibility for developing “cognition enhancers” becomes more plausible. And the demand for drugs that can help us think faster, remember more, and focus more keenly has already been demonstrated by the market success of drugs like...

The Program and the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) of human genome research is a branch of the National Center for Human Genome Research (NCHGR) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NCHGR is responsible, in conjunction with the Office of Health and Environment at the Department of...

The articles in this issue illuminate psychosocial issues raised by the development and delivery of new medical technologies. Five kinds of questions surface repeatedly: questions about a technology’s purpose(s), the value judgments it presumes, the locus of its control, the external forces that drive it, and its long-term social risks....

Almost every form of cancer in humans has been reported to aggregate in families. These familial clusters can be due to inheritance of a mutated cancer-susceptibility gene, though other explanations include chance association and shared exposures to environmental carcinogens. In recent years, the chromosomal locations of some cancer-predisposing genes have...

The emergence of implantable drug delivery systems will allow us to produce the effects of psychosurgery and surgical sterilization without their irreversible invasions of bodily integrity. However, this clinical advantage does not resolve the most important ethical problems these surgeries face, and may even obscure them when they arise in...