Weinberger-Vermut Annual Genetics Ethics Lecture

The lecture is an introduction to the new and rapidly developing science of polygenic risk scores which makes clear both their possible benefits but also their shortcomings. It examines the most prominent relevant ethical idea, privacy, by means of which the use of such risk scores is critically evaluated. It does this by discussing an important distinction in what it means to have access to the private individual as well as the key concept of ‘personal information.’ It seeks in summary to make better sense of why knowledge of such information, in the form of polygenic risk scores, is morally problematic.