Molecular Genetics in Medicine

A report of the proceedings of the Galton Institute's symposium which explored ethical, legal, political and psychological problems arising within advances in molecular genetics. It concentrates on the applications of molecular genetic techniques in clinical genetics.

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The rapid increase in knowledge of human genetics in recent decades and the spectacular advances in molecular genetics in the 1980s, have already brought remarkable benefits, particularly in the detection of inherited disease pre-natally or pre-symptomatically. But the new techniques have brought with them a host of other problems - ethical, legal, political, psychological. This book reports the proceedings of the Galton Institute's symposium exploring some of these issues. It concentrates on the applications of molecular genetic techniques in clinical genetics, setting these against the background of the experience of existing practice. The volume sketches recent advances in knowledge at the chromosome and molecular levels, how this new knowledge is used to prevent or treat, the benefits brought and expected, and the implications of these practices for the family and society. The book reveals coherence in present policies and sympathetic applications of them in current use, and so provides an introduction to the principles and practice of modern clinical genetics in the United Kingdom.