CGS-authored

Although we may not have control over the end of the world, genetic counseling and selection will give us power to manipulate the quality and extent of individual lives.

In a recent British study, scientists were able to screen for a mutation called BRCA that significantly increases your chances of getting breast cancer. The risk goes from one in 12, for the average person, to seven in 10 for people with this mutation. Screening for and selecting against this mutation could help eliminate breast cancer in future family members who would otherwise carry the faulty mutation and its associated risks.

Within the last 10 years, the use of the human genome enabled scientists of all fields to understand the human being in ways beyond our science fiction imaginations.

Dr. Ronald Green, a Dartmouth College bioethicist, thinks genetics should be used to increase the quality of life, versus the longevity. He describes it like this: Picture a graph with an x-axis, depicting longevity, and the y-axis, representing the current quality of life. It will have a rising and descending hill, with...