Political/Societal Issues

Political/Societal Issues: One societal issue that has the potential to happen would be that a major breakthrough in preventing/healing genetic disorders would occur. However, the treatment is likely to not be affordable for most of the human population. This would in turn lead to pharmaceutical companies securing a lot of power and money. The majority of the population however, would not be able to get the treatment that they would need. This also breaches ethical concerns.

Questions concerning justice are a legitimate ethical concern from the perspective of disadvantaged individuals. The cost of drug development raises questions of government, industry, and insurance company responsibilities to individuals whose pharmacogenetic responses are in a minority. It is often a question if the development of pharmacogenetics will benefit low and middle-income countries due to the cost of experimental procedures and the drugs themselves to be very expensive. These questions are of great importance, but it is of equal importance to address them to the right audience. In my view, it is wrong to ask the scientists or the pharmaceutical companies to answer these questions. It is not their task, and neither is it their task to be concerned about societal implications regarding scientifically-based definitions of genotypes and 'epigenotypes'. Individual scientists and company executives may feel a moral duty to contribute to a just world and to help those who have been disadvantaged owing to earlier injustice from the rich and powerful in particular. Sentiments like these are commendable but are entirely private concerns and nothing that can be imposed on these individuals by society.