Gene Technology

Role of Genetics in Behavioral Ethics

Aditya Christopher^* Department of Medical Genetics, Qassim University, Buraidah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
^*Correspondence: Aditya Christopher, Department of Medical Genetics, Qassim University, Buraidah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Email:

Received: 02-Aug-2021 Published: 23-Aug-2021, DOI: 10.35248/2329-6682.21.10.169

Description

Genetic counseling is a central component within the practice of medical genetics which helps to bridge the science and medical aspects of genetic diseases with patient and family responsible for causing the genetic illness and disability. Hereditary diseases affect millions of families around the world. Nearly 5% of all pregnancies result in the birth of a child with a significant genetic disorder or a disability. 43% of severe intellectual defects, cases are happened by individual genes or chromosomal abnormalities. In developed countries, fully or partially inherited diseases account for approximately 36 to 53% of child hospitalizations. Most non-infectious diseases, which are the leading causes of death in developed countries, can have a genetic component.

The significant job of genetic ethics is to convey medical data and facilitate patient understanding, genetic counselling goes far beyond that and poses problems of social views on disability, personal and family adaptation to the illness and deterioration, individual perceptions, risk, family communication within families, and the challenges in dealing with uncertainty. The most genetic problem we can see inter-family marriages, people with severe intellectual and developmental disabilities now live close to normal life expectancy. The responsibility for most of their care rests with their families.

Recognizing that many people struggle to develop a method of moral reflection and analysis, the clinicians must identify a problem that poses a problem in ethical behaviour and then had to solutions, takes into account the relationship to various interests.

Importance of Ethics

• Existing genetic services in a country must be equally available to all, regardless of solvency, and must first be available to those in greatest need.

• Genetic counselling ought to be non-directive.

• All genetics services, consisting of screening, counselling, and testing, need to be voluntary, aside from screening new-borns for situations for which early and to be had remedy could gain the new-born.

• All clinically relevant information that may affect the health of a person or fetus must be released.

• Genetic information must be kept confidential. If there is a high risk of serious harm to family members at genetic risk, then this information is helpful to avoid that. If the person refuses to tell their family about it, the professional can consider confidentiality first. Individual privacy needs to be maintained by institutional third parties such as employers, insurers, schools, companies and government agencies.

• Adopted children and others with biological relationships outside of the family, we have to know information about their biological relatives under strict rules of anonymity.

• A prenatal diagnosis should be done for the reasons relevant to the fetus problems and only for the identity of genetic diseases or fetal malformations.

• Options relevant to genetic services, including options for counselling, screening, testing, contraception, assisted reproduction if culturally accepted, and post-prenatal abortion is legal, should be freely available and respected.

• Children and families with genetic diseases should be optimally supported and informed.

Conclusion

Finally, we would like to remind readers that moral stress can arise in clinical geneticists and genetic counselors for working in situations filled with emotion and that there is an emerging body of literature that helps to describe it both in the Clinic and in the laboratory settings. Clinical genetic professionals are encouraged to identify resources to help when conflicts are identified; many hospitals must have an ethics committee or committee of trained biomedical ethicists to assist doctors in handling the demanding cases. Professional associations also often have ethics committees that can even offer case advice if necessary.