The ELSI Genetics Regulatory Resource Kit: A Tool for Policymakers in Developing Countries

• Published in: The Journal of law, medicine & ethics medicine & ethics, 2004-12, Vol.32 (4), p.692-700
• Main Authors: Merali, Zara, Singer, Peter A., Boulijenkov, Victor, Daar, Abdallah S.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bioethics; Developing Countries; Economic policy; Genetic Research - ethics; Genetic Research - legislation & jurisprudence; Genetics; Genetics, Medical - ethics; Genetics, Medical - legislation & jurisprudence; Genomics; Government regulation; Guidelines as Topic; Health technology assessment; Human genetics; Humans; International Cooperation; Laws, regulations and rules; LDCs; Policy Making; Regulation
• ISSN: 1073-1105; 1748-720X
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1748-720X.2004.tb01974.x

The international context of the last fifty years of modern bioethics have been significant in establishing health-care ethics or bioethics as a common parlance - an ideology of our times, achieving near universal acceptance, with little dissent. Most international health organizations have developed important declarations that have become the credo of their daily practice and long-term commitments. However, in the last decade in particular, bioethicists and other health-care practitioners and scholars have worried about the persistence of health-care inequities and the inadequate realization of bioethics, particularly in low-to-middle income countries. Global bioethics, now well into the new millennium, has entered a regulatory crisis: it needs to confront not just global bioethical commitments around major scientific revolutions such as genomics, but further, a regulatory crisis about the persisting national public law silences and health inequities, especially in low-to-middle income countries.