Janus Face of Prenatal Diagnostics

Eve-Marie Engels is full Professor of Ethics in the Life Sciences at the Faculty of Biology, as well as a member of the Faculty of Philosophy and History, at Eberhard Karls University of Tubingen. From 2001 to 2008 she was a member of the German National Ethics Council. Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber is a training analyst in the German Psychoanalytical Association, former Chair of the Research Subcommittees for Conceptual Research, and a member of the Swiss Psychoanalytical Society. She is Vice Chair of the Research Board of the International Psychoanalytical Association, Full Professor for Psychoanalysis at the University of Kassel, and head Director of the Sigmund Freud Institute, Frankfurt/Main. Her main research fields include epistemology and methods of clinical and empirical research in psychoanalysis, interdisciplinary discourse with embodied cognitive science, educational sciences, and modern German literature. John Tsiantis is Professor of Child Psychotherapy, President of European Union of Medical Specialists Section of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, previously Chief Editor of the EFPP Monographs book series, and President of the Hellenic Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.

'The EDIG (Ethical Dilemmas due to Prenatal and Genetic Diagnostics) study offered a unique chance for a multi-disciplinary dialogue between ethicists, psychoanalysts, medical doctors, philosophers, and cultural anthropologists.Another innovative aspect was the possibility that relatively detailed interviews with women/couples after PND (Prenatal and Genetic Diagnosis), as well as the empirical findings based on large-scale questionnaire data, could be used by all the different authors of this volume, who would look at them from different disciplinary and cultural perspectives. The four parts of the book reflect the multi-disciplinary approach and contain theoretical, historical, ethical, and philosophical, as well as empirical and clinical, contributions.'- From the Preface

• Preface: Short Summary of the European Research Project EDIG -- Introduction -- Introduction and overview -- Ethics of care in prenatal diagnosis: implications of variations in law, policy, and practice in EDIG countries -- State of the art in prenatal diagnosis -- Findings of EDIG -- Empirical data evaluation on EDIG (Ethical Dilemmas due to Prenatal and Genetic Diagnostics) -- Some comments of countries that collected empirical and clinical data -- Comment A, concerning Italian empirical data -- Comment B, concerning empirical and clinical data from an Israeli perspective -- Comment C, concerning empirical data from a Greek perspective -- Interviewing women and couples after prenatal and genetic diagnostics -- Crisis intervention after prenatal diagnostics: an example -- “I’d also like to be in good hope myself for once.” The highly problematic decision-making process within the framework of PND and its dependency on a sufficiently developed, autonomous female identity -- Ethical Considerations about EDIG -- Experience and ethics: ethical and methodological reflections on the integration of the EDIG study in the ethical landscape -- Moral dilemmas and decision-making in prenatal genetic testing -- The moral status of the foetus -- Prenatal genetic counselling: conceptual and ethical issues -- The interchange between psychoanalysis and philosophy in the understanding of ethical decisions -- Clinical, Medical, and Societal Implications -- A model of integrated genetic counselling (IGC): EDIG as a transformation promoter in PND -- Prenatal and genetic diagnostics and trisomia 21: a current debate of ethical and psychosocial implications with reference to Greece -- PND in a Christian and Muslim culture. The EDIG project in Thrace, Greece -- Introducing new tests in genetic diagnostics: details of some ongoing controversial discussions in Swedish media