ETHICAL
LEGAL
SOCIAL
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New to the scientific research world, epigenetics has the potential to raise a variety of issues related to research ethics, confidentiality of information, and privacy. When applying epigenetics to health sciences, concerns about clinical and public health ethics are bound to surface. Therefore, the focus on the controversial and ethical implications of epigenetics in the following broad areas (49):
- environmental justice
- privacy and confidentiality
- access to health care
- intergenerational equity
Research in epigenetics increases issues and concerns towards protection of privacy for the patients that are tested with epigenetic treatments. The main legal issue, like genetics, is privacy and confidentiality issues (24). By using an individual's genetic information, it could violate an individual's right to privacy.
The controversy involves whether or not to keep these epigenetic data under protection of privacy and enforce a new law. Currently, the U.S. enacts the State Genetic Privacy Laws that contains enforcement of genetic information of individuals, but do not enforce any protection for epigenetic privacy (38).
In any topic involving scientific research, social issues are inevitable. Epigenetics pull out different issues that socially influence and include those who are affected through the resulting adverse health effects. Many of these social controversies involve companies and employees who can be epigenetically affected in the future. What can also arise from these "epigenetically triggered" controversies, is genetic discrimination. Epigenetics cause not only a change in one individual, but it can cause a mass of conflicts socially throughout the human population. (40)
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Because epigenetics is relatively new to the science world, it is hard to predict what kind of issues will arise. As with all scientific research, there are concerns and issues that can range in controversies from ethical, legal, and/or social. Similar to the issues of genetics, epigenetic issues revolve around privacy and societal responsibility.