Decision Trap
Genetic Education and Its Social Consequences
Published on 15. June 2015
191 pages
978-1-84540-831-2 (ISBN)
Description
The Decision Trap questions 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 "e;gene"e; as it is commonly understood, and shows that, scientifically, the concept of genes as definable, causal agents is outdated.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.
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06/2015
Imprint Academic
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Content
- Cover
- Contents
- Front matter
- Title page
- Publisher information
- Acknowledgment
- Preface to the English Edition by Barbara Katz Rothman
- Preface to the German Edition
- Body matter
- 1. Introduction: Gene as the Basis for Decision Making?
- Distancing as a Research Approach
- 2. Genetic Education
- 2.1. The Gene
- 2.2. Educational Campaigns
- 2.2.1. Illiterate citizens? A Bremen congress
- 2.2.2. The genetic literacy campaign
- 2.2.3. Genetic counselling
- 2.3. On the History of Genetic Counselling: Genetics as the Foundation of Sociopolitics
- 2.3.1. The scientific management of hereditary dispositions
- 2.3.2. More effective than coercion: Education and responsibility
- 2.3.3. A new goal: The informed decision
- 3. "Informed Choice": How Genetic Counsellors Empower their Clients to Attain Self-Determination
- 3.1. The Initial Transformation of the Person: The Client as a Gene Carrier
- 3.1.1. The genetic person
- 3.1.2. The incomprehensible self
- 3.1.3. Things in the body
- 3.1.3.1. Visual representations as reproductions of reality
- 3.1.3.2. Reification through language
- 3.1.4. Hidden causes
- 3.1.5. Meaningful information
- 3.1.6. Internal agents
- 3.1.7. Genes as an "illusion"
- 3.2. Second Transformation of the Person: Clients as Risk Carriers
- 3.2.1. A grave misunderstanding: Risk as diagnosis
- 3.2.2. The client as a statistical construct
- 3.2.3. The pathogenic effects of physician-attested risks
- 3.2.4. Life in irrealis mood
- 3.2.5. The genetic risk
- 3.2.6. The genetic self
- 3.3. The Compulsion to Risk Management: The Decision
- 3.3.1. The imperative of the autonomous decision
- 3.3.2. The option requiring a decision: The test
- 3.3.3. Self-determined helplessness
- 3.3.3.1. Obligatory risk management
- 3.3.3.2. Mobilized helplessness
- 3.3.4. Decision making: The paradox of personal risk assessment
- 3.3.4.1. Amniocentesis: An arbitrary test?
- 3.3.4.2. Prenatal decision making and economic rationality
- 3.4. The Decision Trap
- 4 .Conclusion: Disempowering Autonomy
- 4.1. The Tyranny of Choice
- 4.2. Autonomous Decision Making as Social Technology
- 4.3. Conclusion: Now What?
- Back matter
- Transcription Conventions
- Bibliography
- Also available
