Bioethical challenges in personalised medicine Authors Jordi Camí Barcelona Biomedical Research Park, Barcelona Abstract Most of the ethical, legal and moral questions that result from the concept of personalised medicine are deeply related to genetic testing. Firstly, there is an increasing concern about the standardisation, accuracy, usefulness, and interpretation of the results provided by direct-to-consumer genetic testing. Secondly, genetic testing should be restricted by medical prescription and as such, there is an urgent need to train healthcare professionals so that they are also able to provide specific genetic counselling. Thirdly, genetic testing involves a new dimension of ethics of privacy, because the results obtained can affect your relatives and in particular your offspring. Furthermore, it can also lead to new forms of genetic or economic discrimination. All these factors should be taken into consideration so that the expectationscreated within the general public with regard to personalisedmedicine are more realistic.Keywords: personalised medicine ∙ genetic testing ∙ risk factors ∙ genetic counselling ∙ genetic discrimination Downloads PDF Issue Vol. 8 No. 2 (2012) Section Bioethics and Social Responsabilities License This work is subject, unless the contrary is indicated in the text, the photographs or in other illustrations, to an Attribution —Non-Commercial— No Derivative Works 3.0 Creative Commons License, the full text of which can be consulted at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. You are free to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work provided that the author is credited and reuse of the material is restricted to non-commercial purposes only and that no derivative works are created from the original material.
