Ethical Issues in Pharmacogenetics

Introduction Pharmacogenetics is the study of the role that inheritance plays in individual variation to drug response. Understanding the influence of heritability on an individual’s drug metabolism offers the potential to identify which drug, and at what dose, is likely to be safest and most effective for a particular individual, which helps medical practitioners improve patient outcomes as well as reduce adverse drug events (ADEs). Pharmacogenetics offers medical practitioners the ability to more accurately customize medicine dosages. Currently, the majority of medicines are taken in dosages determined by patient age (pediatric versus adult), weight, and other clinical factors. In many instances, these criteria are proving to be inadequate to ensure that a medicine will be safe and effective for a particular individual. Pharmacogenetics promises to take the guesswork out of prescribing safe and effective drugs. However, the use of pharmacogenetics in both clinical research and medical practice poses various ethical concerns. While these concerns are common to the fields of both genetics and genomics, they are nonetheless also relevant to pharmacogenetics. Some of the major issues are discussed here.
Source: ActionBioscience - Category: Science Authors: Source Type: news