Ethical Issues

Ethical Issues: The study of pharmacogenetics breaches many ethical issues and concerns. First off, the most important issue would be altering the human genome for benefits and therefore, upsetting years of evolution and natural selection at work. Personally, I think that this is a risk we all would have to take to find definite answers to genetic and chromosome-related conditions such as Down syndrome and other problems such as muscular dystrophy, etc. Another ethical concern would be that the potential drug would be tested on other humans since the entire concept is based on altering and repairing human DNA for desired results. Again, altering the human genome on another person for the purpose of experimentation, even with the final objective being to augment and solidify our understanding of science, is subject to a lot of controversy. We are talking about changing humans here.

Also, another very controversial issue is that pharmacogenetic research uses population-based blood/tissue sampling for the study of genetic variation, and gene–environment interaction studies require large biobanks and access to medical and personal data. One example having access to peoples' genetic information in order to determine whether there is a genotype–phenotype correlation. Selection and access of such information poses special ethical problems that is intrinsic to pharmacogenetic research. However, a great deal of ethics research has been conducted on the specific problems related to informed consent and the confidentiality of personal information, the two main questions in the ethics of biobanking.  For previously collected human biological material, no consent is needed, provided that the material and data are safely coded, securely stored and only accessible to authorized individuals, and that the original donors have not explicitly said 'no' to future use. For new collections of samples and data, the current and generally preferred solution is to obtain broad or general consent for future research, again provided that the material and data are coded and securely stored and that there is a viable option for the donor/participant to withdraw from the study.



This is a diagram depicting some of the uses of this technology. As you can see, some of the activities include human experimentation and observation of certain traits in humans which are borderline ethical/unethical, but still allowed.