Genetic Exceptionalism
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Genetic Exceptionalism
Genetic exceptionalism is the belief that genetic information is special and so must be treated differently from other types of medical data or other personally identifiable information. For example, patients are able to obtain information about their blood pressure without involving any medical professionals, but to obtain information about their genetic profile might require an order from a physician and expensive counseling sessions. Disclosure of an individual's genetic information or its meaning, such as telling a woman with red hair that she has a higher risk of skin cancer, has been legally restricted in some places, as providing medical advice. That policy approach has been taken by state legislatures to safeguard individuals' genetic information in the United States from individuals, their families, their employers, and the government. The approach builds upon the existing protection required of general health information provided by such laws as the Health Insurance Po ...
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Genetic Information
A nucleic acid sequence is a succession of bases signified by a series of a set of five different letters that indicate the order of nucleotides forming alleles within a DNA (using GACT) or RNA (GACU) molecule. By convention, sequences are usually presented from the 5' end to the 3' end. For DNA, the sense strand is used. Because nucleic acids are normally linear (unbranched) polymers, specifying the sequence is equivalent to defining the covalent structure of the entire molecule. For this reason, the nucleic acid sequence is also termed the primary structure. The sequence has capacity to represent information. Biological deoxyribonucleic acid represents the information which directs the functions of an organism. Nucleic acids also have a secondary structure and tertiary structure. Primary structure is sometimes mistakenly referred to as ''primary sequence''. Conversely, there is no parallel concept of secondary or tertiary sequence. Nucleotides Nucleic acids consist ...
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Personal Data
Personal data, also known as personal information or personally identifiable information (PII), is any information related to an identifiable person. The abbreviation PII is widely accepted in the United States, but the phrase it abbreviates has four common variants based on ''personal'' or ''personally'', and ''identifiable'' or ''identifying''. Not all are equivalent, and for legal purposes the effective definitions vary depending on the jurisdiction and the purposes for which the term is being used. Under European and other data protection regimes, which centre primarily on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the term "personal data" is significantly broader, and determines the scope of the regulatory regime. National Institute of Standards and Technology Special Publication 800-122 defines personally identifiable information as "any information about an individual maintained by an agency, including (1) any information that can be used to distinguish or trace an i ...
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Blood Pressure
Blood pressure (BP) is the pressure of circulating blood against the walls of blood vessels. Most of this pressure results from the heart pumping blood through the circulatory system. When used without qualification, the term "blood pressure" refers to the pressure in the large arteries. Blood pressure is usually expressed in terms of the systolic pressure (maximum pressure during one heartbeat) over diastolic pressure (minimum pressure between two heartbeats) in the cardiac cycle. It is measured in millimeters of mercury ( mmHg) above the surrounding atmospheric pressure. Blood pressure is one of the vital signs—together with respiratory rate, heart rate, oxygen saturation, and body temperature—that healthcare professionals use in evaluating a patient's health. Normal resting blood pressure, in an adult is approximately systolic over diastolic, denoted as "120/80 mmHg". Globally, the average blood pressure, age standardized, has remained about the same since 1 ...
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Medical Advice
Medical advice is the provision of a formal professional opinion regarding what a specific individual should or should not do to restore or preserve health. Typically, medical advice involves giving a diagnosis and/or prescribing a treatment for medical condition. Medical advice can be distinguished from medical information, which is the relation of facts. Discussing facts and information is considered a fundamental free speech right and is not considered medical advice. Medical advice can also be distinguished from personal advice, even if the advice concerns medical care. Doctor–patient relationship Medical advice is given in the context of a doctor–patient relationship. A licensed health care professional can be held legally liable for the advice he or she gives to a patient. Giving bad advice may be considered medical malpractice under specified circumstances. The doctor–patient relationship is one factor in determining the patient's compliance with medical advice. ...
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United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is also in free association with three Pacific Island sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City. Paleo-Americ ...
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Health Insurance Portability And Accountability Act
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA or the Kennedy– Kassebaum Act) is a United States Act of Congress enacted by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 21, 1996. It modernized the flow of healthcare information, stipulates how personally identifiable information maintained by the healthcare and healthcare insurance industries should be protected from fraud and theft, and addressed some limitations on healthcare insurance coverage. It generally prohibits healthcare providers and healthcare businesses, called ''covered entities'', from disclosing protected information to anyone other than a patient and the patient's authorized representatives without their consent. With limited exceptions, it does not restrict patients from receiving information about themselves. It does not prohibit patients from voluntarily sharing their health information however they choose, nor does it require confidential ...
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Huntington's Disease
Huntington's disease (HD), also known as Huntington's chorea, is a neurodegenerative disease that is mostly inherited. The earliest symptoms are often subtle problems with mood or mental abilities. A general lack of coordination and an unsteady gait often follow. It is also a basal ganglia disease causing a hyperkinetic movement disorder known as chorea. As the disease advances, uncoordinated, involuntary body movements of chorea become more apparent. Physical abilities gradually worsen until coordinated movement becomes difficult and the person is unable to talk. Mental abilities generally decline into dementia. The specific symptoms vary somewhat between people. Symptoms usually begin between 30 and 50 years of age but can start at any age. The disease may develop earlier in each successive generation. About eight percent of cases start before the age of 20 years, and are known as ''juvenile HD'', which typically present with the slow movement symptoms of Parkinson's d ...
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Biomarker
In biomedical contexts, a biomarker, or biological marker, is a measurable indicator of some biological state or condition. Biomarkers are often measured and evaluated using blood, urine, or soft tissues to examine normal biological processes, pathogenic processes, or pharmacologic responses to a therapeutic intervention. as cited in Biomarkers are used in many scientific fields. Medicine Biomarkers used in the medical field, are a part of a relatively new clinical toolset categorized by their clinical applications. The three main classes are molecular biomarkers, cellular biomarkers or imaging biomarkers. All three types of biomarkers have a clinical role in narrowing or guiding treatment decisions and follow a sub-categorization of being either predictive, prognostic, or diagnostic. Predictive Predictive molecular, cellular, or imaging biomarkers that pass validation can serve as a method of predicting clinical outcomes. Predictive biomarkers are used to help optimize id ...
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Genetic Privacy
Genetic privacy involves the concept of personal privacy concerning the storing, repurposing, provision to third parties, and displaying of information pertaining to one's genetic information. This concept also encompasses privacy regarding the ability to identify specific individuals by their Nucleic acid sequence, genetic sequence, and the potential to gain information on specific characteristics about that person via portions of their genetic information, such as their propensity for specific diseases or their immediate or distant ancestry. With the public release of genome sequence information of participants in large-scale research studies, questions regarding participant privacy have been raised. In some cases, it has been shown that it is possible to identify previously anonymous participants from large-scale genetic studies that released gene sequence information. Genetic privacy concerns also arise in the context of criminal law because the government can sometimes overcom ...
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HIV Exceptionalism
HIV exceptionalism is the term given to the trend to treat HIV/AIDS in law and policy differently from other diseases, including other sexually transmitted, infectious, lethal diseases. The term first appeared in print in an article in the ''New England Journal of Medicine'' in 1991. HIV exceptionalists emphasize the human rights of people living with HIV/AIDS, particularly their rights to privacy, confidentiality, and autonomy. They also believe that all people seeking an HIV test always require special services, such as counseling with every HIV test, special informed consent paperwork, and guaranteed anonymity in public health reporting. In many places, it is illegal to disclose HIV test results over the phone or over the Internet. That is motivated partly by a desire to reduce the likelihood of suicide in recently diagnosed people. Other goals include encouraging people to consent to the test by, for example, preventing the government from associating a positive test result w ...
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National Conference Of State Legislatures
The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), established in 1975, is a "nonpartisan public officials’ association composed of sitting state legislators" from the states, territories and commonwealths of the United States. Background According to their website, the mission of the Conference is: to advance the effectiveness, independence and integrity of legislatures and to foster interstate cooperation . . . especially in support of state sovereignty and state flexibility and protection from unfunded federal mandates and unwarranted federal preemption. The conference promotes cooperation between state legislatures in the U.S. and those in other countries. . . . [and] is committed to improving the operations and management of state legislatures, and the effectiveness of legislators and legislative staff. NCSL also encourages the practice of high standards of conduct by legislators and legislative staff. NCSL maintains an office in Denver, Colorado and Washington, D.C. ...
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Health Policy In The United States
The United States far outspends any other nation on health care, measured both in ''per capita'' spending and as a percentage of GDP. Despite this, the country has significantly worse healthcare outcomes when compared to peer nations. The United States is the only developed nation without a system of universal health care, with a large proportion of its population not carrying health insurance, a substantial factor in the country's excess mortality. Healthcare is provided by many distinct organizations, made up of insurance companies, healthcare providers, hospital systems, and independent providers. Health care facilities are largely owned and operated by private sector businesses. 58% of community hospitals in the United States are non-profit, 21% are government-owned, and 21% are for-profit. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the United States spent $9,403 on health care per capita, and 17.9% on health care as percentage of its GDP in 2014. Healthcare cove ...
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