Abstract This article explores the processes through which the advances of genetic research are incorporated into public health care in Denmark. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in cancer genetic counselling, the implementation of new medical advances is investigated by following the establishment of a policy on informing relatives at risk of hereditary cancer. This case material provides the occasion to examine how policies are shaped in a governmental process through which different actors seek to establish a common goal for a specific health practice. The struggle to define such a goal implies a struggle to define where to draw the line between health and disease and what makes up a healthy person in the context of genetic knowledge. The authors argue that in the process of establishing a policy in the field of cancer genetics the imperative of prevention comes to provide the framework within which an ethics of rights and responsibilities is constituted and the target group of cancer genetic counselling defined. This ethics is not determined by or inherent in genetic technology itself, but constituted in a social process and therefore negotiated within pre-existing frameworks of understanding in professional practice.

中文翻译：

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遗传学和预防：正在制定的政策

摘要 本文探讨了将基因研究进展纳入丹麦公共卫生保健的过程。借鉴癌症遗传咨询中的民族志实地工作，通过制定告知有遗传性癌症风险的亲属的政策，对新医学进展的实施进行了调查。本案例材料提供了一个机会来研究政策是如何在政府过程中形成的，通过该过程，不同的参与者寻求为特定的卫生实践建立共同的目标。定义这样一个目标的斗争意味着要在遗传知识的背景下界定健康与疾病之间的界限以及构成健康人的因素的斗争。作者认为，在癌症遗传学领域制定政策的过程中，预防的必要性在于提供一个框架，在该框架内构成权利和责任的伦理，并确定癌症遗传咨询的目标群体。这种伦理不是由遗传技术本身决定或固有的，而是在社会过程中构成的，因此在专业实践中预先存在的理解框架内进行协商。