NCP Domains 2, 5 & 6
Genetics, Screening & Emerging-Technology Ethics
Genetic counseling, screening, gene editing, and AI-assisted diagnosis raise questions that faith and personal values shape in real ways. This page covers those topics themselves, not decisions about a pregnancy, which are covered on the Maternal & Reproductive Care page.
Viewing as: Patient & Family · Change
Scope note: this page covers genetic counseling, screening, gene editing, and AI-assisted diagnosis themselves. It does not cover selective-termination decisions; those remain under Maternal & Reproductive Care Values's existing abortion exclusion.
Clinical evidence
Religious and spiritual beliefs function as a heuristic some clients use to cope with genetic-risk uncertainty, and a limited spiritual assessment is recommended in genetic counseling — while some religious/spiritual beliefs can genuinely conflict with medicine's values.
A qualitative study of 12 of 33 eligible North American genetic-counseling graduate programs found almost all cover pastoral-care information, but most offer little to no training on specific religious/spiritual beliefs or spiritual-assessment tools — training was called critical but inconsistent and rarely evaluated.
A qualitative study of 25 practicing genetic counselors (from a national sample of 298) found religious and spiritual foundations emerged as one of five major themes in counselors' own meaning-making in clinical work.
A mixed-methods study of 200 Muslim religious officials in Türkiye found vaccine and newborn-screening hesitancy clustered around safety and institutional-trust concerns, privacy and biomaterial concerns, and fertility/genetic-harm beliefs; only 19% were aware of the OIC's pro-vaccination fatwa, and awareness was not associated with lower hesitancy.
A survey of 1,537 people across 67 countries found general support for germline gene editing, especially for medical uses, but the most opposition was found among religious respondents.
A survey of 1,004 Australians on comfort with embryo editing for research or health purposes found moral concern — a stronger driver than hereditary concern — was accentuated among more religious respondents.
A survey of 4,939 U.S. adults across 9 religious and non-religious groups found atheists most supportive and least concerned about gene editing, Muslims most concerned, and Mainline Protestants least supportive — the study explicitly cautions against generalizing attitudes within any single religious group.
A survey of 341 South Africans found 73.7% preferred a human doctor over an AI system for serious health decisions, and the importance of religion to a respondent significantly predicted this preference (P<.001).
Islamic gene-editing guidance: pending live verification
A documented Islamic position is named here in prose only, without formal citation, because our verification pipeline has not yet completed a live check of its source documents: IIFA documents that gene therapy for treatment (transferring, repairing, or silencing genes) is permissible provided it does not confound lineage and is not for aesthetic or enhancement purposes; genome editing is conditioned on accredited safety and effectiveness and regulation protecting patient dignity; and sex selection is prohibited except for therapeutic necessity in sex-linked hereditary disease. Deliberately scoped to gene therapy and editing conditions only, not prenatal termination. Per our methodology, a reference doesn't become a citation until it passes verification, including well-known ones.
Topics whose published claims share NCP domains with this page.