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A useless phenomenon: Alzheimer’s disease, professionals and ethical debates around genetic testing Volume 24, issue 1, Mars 2006

Author
Department of Sociology, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, RU

The discovery in the mid-1990 that the ApoEe4 allele is associated with increased risk of developing late onset Alzheimer’s disease was heralded at the time, in both scientific and lay press, as a significant result. Yet this scientific phenomenon is regarded by those who treat Alzheimer’s disease as clinically useless. This paper shows how this situation came, how the professional community around Alzheimer developed a consensus against clinical ApoEe4 testing. The main contention is that although this reluctance to test is couched in technical terms, it is an ethical stance, and as such raises questions about the need for scientific experts to get ethical advice from bioethicists and ethical experts.