AMBI+602


 * (AMBI 602)** __GenEthics__: Until recently, human genetics focused on rare, single-gene disorders and the occasional quirky inherited trait. That has changed radically with the new millennium, as we have learned the entire human genome sequence and are beginning to glimpse how it varies. Attention is increasingly focused on the more common illnesses that reflect the input of many genes as well as the environment. Ironically, at the same time, everyday language reflects genetic determinism, the idea that we are our genes -- she has "the gene for" something or "it's in his DNA." The relevance of this new view of human genetics to bioethics is that it brings this once fairly obscure field to everyone. We encounter genetics not only in the traditional medical setting, but in the many direct-to-consumer tests that purport to do everything from catching a cheating spouse to testing a child for inherited athletic prowess to tracing ancestry to predicting how we might die. On the clinical genetics front, diagnostics and prognostics are far outpacing therapeutics (gene and stem cell therapies).