How Distinctive is Genetic Information?

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Abstract

There is extensive discussion of the ethical, social, economic and political issues associated with the use of technologies based on DNA techniques. Many of these debates are premised on the assumption that DNA, and the genetic information that may be derived from it, have unique features which raise new social and ethical issues. In this paper it is argued that several of the features associated with DNA which are sometimes regarded as unique are shared with other biological materials. Others owe more to the cultural image of DNA and some of the metaphors used to discuss it in biology and in wider debates than to the biological properties of DNA. The paper discusses the concepts of genetic material and genetic information and the social construction of DNA in relation to forensic DNA databases, paternity testing and genetic testing for disease. The paper concludes by suggesting that there are seven areas where issues related to DNA and genetic information are at least relatively distinct.

Introduction

DNA technologies have a very wide variety of uses of medical and social significance. These include the development of predictive tests for Mendelian diseases, the creation of forensic DNA data bases, and tests for confirming family relationship in the context of immigration control and child support payments. These, and many other uses of these technologies and the information they can produce, have led to much discussion about the ethical, social, economic and political issues involved. Debates have often focused on issues of confidentiality and privacy, and the ways in which DNA and genetic information is obtained, stored and used in clinical research and practice and in many other social contexts. Legislative systems and other arrangements exist for the control and governance of the use of molecular genetic information and material in many countries (See Knoppers et al., 1998).1 Many of the debates about the use of these new technologies appear to be premised on the assumption that DNA and the genetic information that may be derived from it have unique features which may raise new social and ethical issues distinct from those related to other biological material, issues that, in turn, may call for new forms of regulation. In this paper I will explore the concepts of genetic material and information and the extent to which these may be regarded as different from other biological materials and information. I will argue that several of the features associated with DNA and genetic information are less distinctive than is often supposed.2 Some perceptions of DNA may owe much to the cultural image that it has acquired through the ways in which biologists and commentators have talked up the power and potency of this molecule which has become an icon of our society (Nelkin and Linde, 1995). More subtle in their effects, but perhaps even more persuasive, are the metaphors used in the biological sciences and in popular accounts and debates about science, which accord a unique, and in some ways misleading, status to the genome (Pollack, 1994).

In analysing what may, or may not, be distinctive about uses of DNA technology, it will be important to draw a distinction between genetic material, DNA, and the genetic information that may be derived from this and other sources. In some situations the problematic issues arise because DNA analysis, rather than other kinds of analysis, has been used to produce information, but the information itself may not raise new issues. In other cases it is the information that can be produced through DNA analysis (or sometimes other means) that is the key point. As I shall describe, forensic data bases are an example of the former situation, while some predictive genetic testing for Mendelian disease falls into the latter category.

Section snippets

Genetic Material

The term genetic material refers to the DNA of the chromosomes and mitochondria

Genetic Information

The special status that may be accorded to genetic information arises, in part, from the ways in which DNA is often conceptualised in modern biology. Contemporary biology is often very genocentric. Not only do genes usually hold centre stage as the stuff of inheritance but, for instance, it has become increasingly fashionable to see evolution not in terms of the changes in attributes of descendants over generations but as the genes that may, or may not, be passed on to posterity. Genes, it is

The Social Construction of the Concept of DNA

In the section on genetic information I touched on the conceptual position that DNA has come to occupy in much contemporary biology. Here I will discuss the concept of DNA as a social construction. DNA does have a unique social position as the only biologically important molecule that has a name known in most households in the land. It is perhaps comforting to regard the hyperbole of the socially constructed DNA as simply hype that has accompanied the biologists' project to sequence the human

Uses of Genetic Information

I will now discuss a number of uses of genetic information derived from DNA sequencing in the light of my discussion of genetic material and information.

(a) Forensic data bases

The idea of a data base of identifying information that could be used to name suspects involved in crime is not new. Traditionally, police have used photographs and fingerprints to do this. Both facial appearance and fingerprints are highly individual phenotypic characteristics which can produce fairly accurate

Conclusions

It has become routine for politicians and other commentators when welcoming the latest developments in DNA technology to refer to the new social and ethical challenges that the new technology will bring. However, at least for the existing technologies that have been the subject of this chapter, many of the issues are not new. However, there are seven areas where the issues raised by DNA technology are at least to a degree distinctive.

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to many colleagues and friends who provided comments on earlier drafts of this paper. In particular, I would like to thank Bill Albert, Peter Dicken, Jane Halliday, Martin Johnson, Greg Radick, Sarah Smalley, Sandy Thomas, Tom Wilkie, Ron Zimmern and members of the Cambridge Psychosocial Genetics Group. But, of course, the responsibility for what I have said rests with me and not them. Jill Brown and Sally Roberts provided excellent technical support, as always. J. D. Crowe,

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