Edited by Alison K Thompson and Ruth F Chadwick, New York, Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 1999, 348 pages, $115 (hc).

News that the first draft of a map of the human genome had been completed was received with great excitement but fears persist about how this knowledge will be used. Such concerns were the basis for an international conference held in Preston, England in December 1997. The issues addressed were non-existent when many of those attending the conference were born, but they are among the most pressing ethical problems we face today. They are philosophically challenging, and the way we deal with them will have far reaching consequences for both individuals and society. The proceedings of the conference are now available in this book .

Thirty authors, almost exclusively from Western Europe and North America, have written about the important issues of eugenics, insurance, the effects of market forces and the question of patents, public awareness of genetics and a variety of psychosocial and ethical concerns. Readers with …