Some potential ethical problems with the results of genetic research

(11) If it is so included, will subsidy be for all or only for some diseases?

These questions involve issues of equity and fairness as between people. Society has not answered similar questions well in the past – perhaps it will not get it right this time either.

(12) Who will "own" personal information derived from studying genomes?

(13) Will commercial interests, or society, apply coercion of any kind on the basis of genetic differences between people?

Consider an insurance company that uses risk assessment to "load" basic premiums. So if you are a smoker, you pay more. Should it happen, will it happen, that the possession of certain combinations of genes will result in higher premiums too?

There are 13 questions and they go to what we are, what our society is, and what that society and we will be.

A question you may wish to consider in depth is what the genome may mean for human longevity. For decades there has been an unspoken search for immortality, picked up in the so-called "war against cancer" or the "war against heart disease". But knowledge derived from the human genome project is likely to make human life much longer. A geneticists was quoted in a medical newspaper recently as saying:

"In theory, there is no reason why immortality couldn’t be achieved."

Foolish ultra-Cartesian thinkers believe that humans are only machines and that all one needs to do is repair or replace the parts for it to keep going indefinitely.

But if the balance between loss of people and replacement of people is altered, there will be more people than ever upon this globe. Will the "population explosion" get much worse? What will be the consequences of this for human reproduction? For example, will China’s "one child" policy become standard practice for all advanced societies? Or is even that restrictive policy too generous for the future? There may be nasty consequences from the possible population increase. For example, will environments degrade even faster than they do now? Will fertility have to drop even lower than it is now? Or will there be an even greater "population explosion". Do we expect that increases in food production will allow more people from wealthy countries to be fed – even if millions from less fortunate countries continue to starve? Where will people live? Where will people find enough water, or jobs, or homes – let alone enough space?

It is possible to go on, but the outline of the problem is clear. Our society will be changed in quite major ways by the knowledge that comes from the HGP.

You would think that such questions would be urgent and immediate. But those running ELSI have been concentrating on certain specific matters like insurance – important in themselves but only a small piece of the problem.