ABSTRACT
Healthcare providers experience changing roles. Physicians are seen as managers of care rather than repositories of all medical knowledge. Caveats will accompany and qualify these changes for individuals in terms of privacy of information and the possibility of genetic discrimination. Ethical and legal issues are associated with genomics, from its nascence in the Human Genome Project to the development of personalized healthcare, and throughout the entire life cycle of "base pairs to bedside" and "helix to health". The Genetic Information Nondisclosure Act of 2008 (GINA) prohibits group and individual health insurers from using genetic data for determining eligibility and premiums, insurers from requesting that the insured undergo genetic testing, employers from using genetic data to make genetic decisions, and employers from requesting genetic data about an employee or family. Finally, the outcomes of these ethical caveats on the claims of genomics and genomic medicine remain to be seen.
