Ethical Issues of Human Genetic Databases

Professor Bernice Elger teaches health law and bioethics at the Institute of Legal Medicine, University of Geneva. She is a member of an international collaboration project on ethical issues of human genetic databases, with involvement of the Department of Ethics, Trade, Human Rights and Health Law at the World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters in Geneva, a member of the subcommission who wrote the Swiss guidelines on biobanks, a member of the ethics board of @neurist, an international data and sample bank project financed by the European Commission, and a member of a Swiss working group on informed consent (Swiss Biobank).

Contents: Foreword, Arthur L. Caplan; Introduction; Selected existing genetic databases: distinctive features, ethical problems and the public debate; The ethical debate: principles, values and interests - the ethical foundations of guidelines; Selected issues of consensus and of controversy; Ethical issues human genetic databases and the future; References; Index.