This article presents an overview of the social, ethical, and legal implications of the Human Genome Project. The benefits of this mega-project, expressed as promises of a therapeutic revolution in medicine, will not be achieved without conflict. The process of technological innovation in genetics poses problems of various orders: on the one hand, consortium-based research, gene patenting, and genomic products tend to feature commercial interests and management of the results of such research. These problems raise challenges in terms of possible inequality in access to the benefits of research. On the other hand, we have the issue of genetic information and safeguarding individual data concerning the risks and susceptibilities to human diseases and characteristics. Defining men and women as a function of genetic traits poses a clear discriminatory threat and becomes even more acute as a function of the genetic reductionism propagated by the mass media. Answers to these problems cannot be expected only from bioethics. The bioethical approach should be combined with political analyses concerning reproduction, sexuality, health, and medicine. Such a vast range of problems cannot be discussed in depth in a single article. The choice was thus made to map them in the sense of emphasizing to what extent, in reflecting on the Genome Project, genomics, and post-genomics, the challenge is met to link such diverse aspects.
Human Genome Project; genetic innovation; reproduction; bioethics