Medical Genetics Casebook

1 (Cases 1–7) Introduction to the Problem:Is an Amniocentesis Program Good Medicine or Social Engineering?.- Curative and Preventive Labels in Medicine.- The Unfragmented Patient.- Cost/Benefit Uses and Abuses.- We Can Never Do Only One Thing: The Ecological Model.- Attitudes Toward Pain and Suffering.- 2 (Cases 8–23) Working with Information.- Lack of Documentation, Verified Diagnosis, or Autopsy.- One Syndrome or Separate Problems.- Catch-All Explanations.- New Syndromes.- 3 (Cases 24–51) Denial and Reality Testing.- How Much Patient Denial Can Be Accepted?.- Anxiety Induction and Lowering.- Perceptions of Risk.- Overmedicalization or Good Medical Practice?.- 4 (Cases 52–74) Self-Image.- The Worth of the Individual.- Carrier Status.- Affected Parents.- Affected Offspring.- Parents’ Sense of Responsibility for the Defect.- 5 (Cases 75–92) Experimental Research and Procedures.- Thalassemia Research.- Other Applications of Fetoscopy.- HLA Linkage, Secretor Linkage Research.- Blood Sampling Studies, Amniotic Fluid Sampling Studies, and Psychological Studies.- Future Effects of Environmental Contaminants.- 6 (Cases 93–118) Selective Abortion:Range of Choices and Time Frames.- Counseling Decision After Physician Referral.- Prenatal Testing Decisions.- Abortion Decided Affirmatively or Negatively Before Testing.- Abortion Decided Affirmatively or Negatively with Test Results.- Followup Support for Abortion Decisions.- 7 (Cases 119–130) Social and Individual Interest Conflicts.- Sex Determination and Selection.- Excuse for Aborting Unwanted Pregnancies.- Referral and Feedback.- The Physician in the Dual Role of Filling Social Interests and Individual Interests.- 8 Pragmatics as an Ethical System.- Adaptation and the Pragmatic Criterion.- The Traditional Trioin Medical Ethics.- Pragmatics.- Value of a Systems Model.- The Nature and Justification of Intervention.- The Forgotten Human Condition.- The Worth of Human Beings.- Future Issues in Medical Ethics.- Medicine as Mythology.- Index of Case Studies.