Bioethics, Business Ethics, and Science: Bioinformatics and the Future of Healthcare

Abstract

The intersection of ethics, computing, and genetics plots a space not yet adequately mapped, despite its importance, indeed, its rapidly growing importance. Its subdomains are well-enough known: “Genethics,” or the study of ethical issues in genetics and genomics, is part of core curricula everywhere. Ethics and computing is an established subfield. Computing and genetics—bioinformatics—has in little more than a decade progressed from subsubspecialty to the sine qua non of contemporary biomedical research, and it bids fair to transform clinical practice. We must prepare for the complete digitization of the genomes of individual patients and the storage of millions of these genomes in very large databases.