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Embodied Narratives

Embodied Narratives

Embodied Narratives

Protecting Identity Interests through Ethical Governance of Bioinformation
Emily Postan, University of Edinburgh
November 2023
Available
Paperback
9781108718196

    Increasing quantities of information about our health, bodies, and biological relationships are being generated by health technologies, research, and surveillance. This escalation presents challenges to us all when it comes to deciding how to manage this information and what should be disclosed to the very people it describes. This book establishes the ethical imperative to take seriously the potential impacts on our identities of encountering bioinformation about ourselves. Emily Postan argues that identity interests in accessing personal bioinformation are currently under-protected in law and often linked to problematic bio-essentialist assumptions. Drawing on a picture of identity constructed through embodied self-narratives, and examples of people's encounters with diverse kinds of information, Postan addresses these gaps. This book provides a robust account of the source, scope, and ethical significance of our identity-related interests in accessing – and not accessing – bioinformation about ourselves, and the need for disclosure practices to respond appropriately. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

    • Offers a conceptually and ethically robust picture of the impacts on our identities of accessing bioinformation about ourselves, without claiming that identity is determined by biology
    • Adopts an interdisciplinary approach to investigating and characterising the nature of identity-interests, providing an evidence-based account that is accessible to readers from diverse disciplines
    • Provides account of identity-interests that is not limited to one kind of health or biological information, developing a theory that can be applied to different categories of bioinformation
    • This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core

    Reviews & endorsements

    ‘… this book has something to offer everyone who is interested in narrative identity, the ethics of accessing personal bioinformation, or both.' David DeGrazia, Bioethics

    See more reviews

    Product details

    November 2023
    Paperback
    9781108718196
    314 pages
    229 × 151 × 18 mm
    0.46kg
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • 1. Attending to identity
    • 2. Mapping the landscape
    • 3. Narrative self-constitution
    • 4. Bioinformation in embodied identity narratives
    • 5. Encounters with bioinformation: three examples
    • 6. Locating identity interests
    • 7. Responsibilities for disclosure
    • 8. Protecting identity in practice.
      Author
    • Emily Postan , University of Edinburgh

      Emily Postan is a chancellor's fellow in Bioethics at the University of Edinburgh Law School and a deputy director of the J Kenyon Mason Institute for Medicine Life Sciences and the Law. Her principal research interests lie in the ethical and regulatory implications of the impacts of health technologies and health data on our identities, group memberships, and relationships with others. Her wider research includes work in neuroethics, reproductive ethics, and regulation of health research.