ABSTRACT
The increasing availability of personal genetic information (a term that we will have to define) creates situations containing challenging, sometimes even morally coercive elements that individuals may experience as difficult to handle. Genetic counselling is supposed to be a measure that allows patients or clients to arrive at self-determined decisions. But genetic counselling can also be a place where new obligations and restrictions are created. From the perspective of bio-politics and bio-governance, genetic counselling can also be seen as a stabilizing element within a preventive regime of ‘liberal eugenics’ (Habermas 2003), regardless of how nondirective the counselling dialogue is. The ostentatious avoidance of directiveness even assures moral legitimacy and averts the accusation that genetics is a collective and coercive measure at the population or ‘gene pool’ level. However the liberty provided in these circumstances may be only a reduced form of freedom just strong enough to serve the justificatory needs of a biomedical construction of society. A series of ethical questions have been and need to be raised. I will focus on just a few, which are connected with the communicative acts of exchanging genetic health information with personal impact. My focus is however larger than genetic counselling and includes communication between family members too.
