The Decision Trap Genetic Education And Its Social Consequences [Paperback]

The Decision Trapquestions a dogma of our time: the assumption that genetic education empowers citizens and increases their autonomy. It argues that professional instructions about genes, genetic risks, and genetic test options convey a genetic worldview which destroys self-confidence and makes clients dependent on genetic experts and technologies. Part one of the book introduces the reader to the idea of genetic education. It clarifies the notion of the gene as it is commonly understood, and shows that, scientifically, the concept of genes as definable, causal agents is outdated. Part two of the book investigates the hidden curriculum of genetic education, using genetic counselling as a prime example. Genetic counselling is a professional service that aims to enable clients to make autonomous decisions about genetic test options and cope with the results.

Silja Samerski'sThe Decision Trapdeftly and counter-intuitively argues that whereas choice is often regarded as equivalent to autonomy and self-determination, in actuality it is a new social technology for managing clients. Her investigation explores choice in the decision-environment of genetic counselling& [It] will be welcome reading for practitioners and students of health policy, as well as for historians of science and researchers of science, technology and society interested in public health and biopolitics. Samerskis analysis is brilliant and her insights path-breaking.

We have entered a strange world in which those moral imperatives of choice and being fully informed constitute a spider's web, a decision trap, from which it is impossible to escape. At one level it is so obvious what has happened but sometimes the obvious needs pointing out and this short book does it economically and clearly.

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