There are many ethical issues associated with the application of genomic medicine in clinical practice. Although many of these have been debated for decades, the recent advances in genetic sequencing technologies, the development of new genomic diagnostics and advanced therapies, is raising new questions. It is however important to remember that many of the ethical principles invoked in genomics (for example, consent, privacy and confidentiality, etc) are shared across health care, but there are some novel issues which arise with genomics. A recent workshop held by the UK Nuffield Foundation in July 2023 (https://shorturl.at/bqFGN) highlighted nine issues as being particularly important, and that there was a need to develop a best practice approach for tackling ethical issues. It will not be possible to cover all of these areas in the talk, but some key issues to be covered will include (a) sharing results with patients, particularly those which predict the potential for disease decades later; (b) disparities that are being created by genomic medicine, both in terms of the diversity of the data available, as well as the inequities in the availability of genomic technologies for different populations; and (c) ethical issues associated with pharmacogenomics in its broadest sense.
