This ethnographic study examines the social and ethical implications of the use of categories of race and ethnicity in human genome research.

The Fred Friendly Seminars are producing a television series, entitled Our Genes/Our Choices, as the centerpiece of a vigorous public communication and education effort designed to engage the American public as well as professional and policy-making constituencies in a critically needed dialogue about the ethical, legal, medical and social implications of advances in genetic technology. This project will create extensive resources and activities for students, educators, policy makers, and professionals in science, medicine, law, business, and religion.

The University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethics will hold the first national meeting to bring together the diverse groups working to reconstruct African American genealogies and ancestries that were disrupted and destroyed by the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The first day of the conference will discuss the importance of disrupted ancestry to the African American community and efforts to use traditional genealogical tools to reconstruct this ancestry.

The increasing availability of genetic information on individuals raises a series of critical questions concerning privacy and confidentiality that have not been fully explored. The rise of computers, the Internet, and managed care all threaten the privacy of individuals' health information; and the sequencing of the human genome makes these issues particularly acute. Sharing genetic information may lead to stigma, discrimination, and threats to jobs and life and health insurance.

Developments in transgenic animal research, together with the limited success of gene transfers targeting human somatic cells, have triggered renewed interest in research on germ line interventions in humans. Debates over modifying the human germ line tend to focus on the long-term consequences to society. Comparatively little attention is paid to the human research that will be necessary to establish that genetic interventions are safe and effective. The aim of this project is to apply U.S.

Funds are requested to license and adapt the Baylor Research and Assurances Information Network (BRAIN) for use at the University of Maryland Baltimore. BRAIN is an online system for creating, routing, approving, and archiving IRB documents that has been in use at Baylor since August 2001. BRAIN will greatly enhance our capacity to evaluate new IRB protocols, to oversee active protocols, and to document responsibilities and accountability of all individuals conducting research involving human subjects under the auspices of the University of Maryland Baltimore.

New screening technologies and new knowledge about the origin and treatment of genetic conditions are changing the genetic screening environment. This project will focus on the impact of these changes on newborn screening, an on-going public health program that tests virtually all newborns for genetic disorders. The long-term objective is to provide guidance to the professionals, policymakers, and members of the public who must make decisions about newborn screening in this new environment. The specific aims are:1.

The ethical, legal, and social issues arising from the use of DNA forensics have not been fully explored. This project aims to investigate the various positions on new and controversial issues surrounding DNA profiling and to educate policymakers so that they better understand privacy and civil liberty issues involved in the application of DNA technology to the criminal justice system.

The proposed project seeks to analyze several of the conceptual, normative, and policy issues that will arise with the development of research in neurogenetics. Even though there have been some excellent studies examining the ethical and social implications of human behavioral genetics, research on neural and cognitive mechanisms will raise new issues that have not been adequately examined.

Over the past two decades, forensic DNA profiling has become an important tool in the investigation of human rights abuse and genocide. There is, however, little understanding of the ethical, historical, political, psychosocial, or policy dimensions of this application of genetic technology. The lack of a well-developed body of relevant research, and few regulations to guide the implementation of humanitarian DNA identification projects, means that organizations and individuals must develop their own ad hoc rules and procedures for the identification process.