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Negotiating the Dilemmas of Prenatal Testing for Genetic Disorders

What Is the Virtuous Person to Do?

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Genetic Information
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Abstract

There is little doubt that potential parents have always been concerned about the well-being of the foetus, their invisible baby-to-be. In the past reassurance, if it came, came only with birth. Prenatal testing techniques and genetic knowledge now provide the means to see the foetus and to test it for genetic disorders. It has been argued that 4the availability of foetal surveillance techniques has transformed the pregnancy experience from a developmental process and a miracle of nature to a risk-dominated and technology-guided event’ (Raines 1996). Rather than a transformation, however, it seems that awe continues to co-exist with varying degrees of agonizing in relation to calculated risk.

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© 1999 Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers

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Gallagher, A. (1999). Negotiating the Dilemmas of Prenatal Testing for Genetic Disorders. In: Thompson, A.K., Chadwick, R.F. (eds) Genetic Information. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-585-34586-4_25

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-585-34586-4_25

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-306-46052-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-585-34586-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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