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Previous Volume 343:1580 November 23, 2000 Number 21 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

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(Oxford Monographs on Medical Genetics. No. 40.) Edited by Muin J. Khoury, Wylie Burke, and Elizabeth J. Thomson. 639 pp. New York, Oxford University Press, 2000. $65. ISBN 0-19-512830-3.

Now that the first draft of the human-genome sequence has been substantially completed, attention is shifting to, among other things, proteomics, pharmacogenomics, the genetics of complex traits, and public health genetics. Although the first three areas of inquiry are new, the use of genetics to improve the health of the population — current or future — is not.

Public health was the asserted justification for state laws enacted before World War II that criminalized marriage or sexual relations between "genetically unfit" persons and authorized the involuntary sterilization of people with mental impairments as well as those who were merely deemed . . . [Full Text of this Article]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Rothstein, M. A. (2002). Rethinking the Meaning of Public Health. J Law Med Ethics 30: 144-149