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Due to new developments in prenatal testing and therapy the fetus is increasingly visible, examinable and treatable in prenatal care. Accordingly, physicians tend to perceive the fetus as a patient and understand themselves as having certain professional duties towards it. However, it is far from clear what it means to speak of a patient in this connection.This volume explores the usefulness and limitations of the concept of ‘fetal patient'against the background of the recent seminal developments in prenatal or fetal medicine. It does so from an interdisciplinary and international perspective. Featuring internationally recognized experts in the field, the book discusses the normative implications of the concept of ‘fetal patient'from a philosophical-theoretical as well as from a legal perspective. This includes its implications for the autonomy of the pregnant woman as well as its consequences for physician-patient-interactions in prenatal medicine.

Advances in molecular genetics have led to the increasing availability of genetic testing for a variety of inherited disorders. While this new knowledge presents many obvious health benefits to prospective individuals and their families it also raises complex ethical and moral dilemmas for families as well as genetic professionals. This book explores the ways in which genetic testing generates not only probabilities of potential futures, but also enjoys new forms of social, individual and professional responsibility. Concerns about confidentiality and informed consent involving children, the assessment of competence and maturity, the ability to engage in shared decision-making through acts of disclosure and choice, are just some of the issues that are examined in detail.

Increasingly more conditions are now being identified as having a genetic component, and controversial new genetic technologies potentially have major consequences for social relations and self-identity. How do family members respond to the information that they have a genetically transmitted disease or condition? How do they communicate (or not communicate) about their shared heritage? How do they decide who to tell and who not to tell within their family? Richly illustrated with the real experiences of individuals and families, Risky Relations is essential reading for anthropologists and sociologists of health and medicine, specialists in family and kinship, and health professionals concerned with the treatment and counselling of clients with genetic conditions. The lived impact of genetic technology on understanding within families with genetic conditions has never been systematically explored. This book fills a major gap by placing ethical, medical and social debates surrounding this charged issue firmly in context.

Contributions to this study are drawn both from health professionals engaged in genetic counselling and from observers and critics with backgrounds in law, philosophy, biology, and the social sciences. This diversity will enable health professonals to examine their activities with a fresh eye, and will help the observer-critic to understand the ethical problems that arise in genetic counselling practice, rather than in imaginary encounters. Most examinations of the ethical issues raised by genetics are concerned in a broad sense with the application of new technology to human reproduction. This volume focuses on genetic counselling and screening as such, providing valuable insights for the health professional, social scientist, philosopher, lawyer, and bioethicist.