The Decision Trap: Genetic Education and Its Social Consequences - Softcover

Samerski, Silja

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1845407768 ISBN 13: 9781845407766

Publisher: Imprint Academic, 2015

Synopsis

The Decision Trap questions a dogma of our time: the assumption that genetic education empowers citizens and increases their autonomy. It argues that professional instructions about genes, genetic risks, and genetic test options convey a genetic worldview which destroys self-confidence and makes clients dependent on genetic experts and technologies. Part one of the book introduces the reader to the idea of genetic education. It clarifies the notion of the "gene" as it is commonly understood, and shows that, scientifically, the concept of genes as definable, causal agents is outdated. Part two of the book investigates the hidden curriculum of genetic education, using genetic counselling as a prime example. Genetic counselling is a professional service that aims to enable clients to make autonomous decisions about genetic test options and cope with the results.

About this title

About the Author:

Silja Samerski is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Leibniz University of Hannover. Her current research focuses on the history and social function of professional counselling. She is author of the book "Die Verrechnete Hoffnung" (The Mathematization of Hope) and has been published in numerous English and German journals and anthologies. She is s trained both as a human geneticist and a sociologist.

Review:

"Silja Samerski's The Decision Trap deftly and counter-intuitively argues that whereas choice is often regarded as equivalent to autonomy and self-determination, in actuality it is a new social technology for managing clients. Her investigation explores choice in the decision-environment of genetic counselling... [It] will be welcome reading for practitioners and students of health policy, as well as for historians of science and researchers of science, technology and society interested in public health and biopolitics. Samerski’s analysis is brilliant and her insights path-breaking."

(S.M. Amadae, author of Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy, and Prisoners of Reason)

"We have entered a strange world in which those moral imperatives of choice and being fully informed constitute a spider's web, a decision trap, from which it is impossible to escape. At one level it is so obvious what has happened but sometimes the obvious needs pointing out and this short book does it economically and clearly."

(David Armstrong, Professor of Medicine and Sociology, KCL)

"Silja Samerski, in this well written and provocative book, raises troubling questions about the 'managerial rationality' that she sees as now reshaping our very sense of ourselves and what it means to be human. She carefully analyzes real life genetic counseling sessions and explores the nature of autonomous decision making and the ‘informed consent’ that must always precede it."

(Jerry Brown, Governor of California)

"Samerski compels us to confront both the limits of modern medicine and the insidious ways it often compels us to participate in what she meticulously reveals as the 'trap' of risk-management. She calls on us to see medicine as a menu of offerings we may not want. I'm delighted to read this book."

(Laura Mamo, author of Queering Reproduction)

About this edition

• Publisher: Imprint Academic
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1845407768
• ISBN 13: 9781845407766
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200