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Epigenetics and Future Generations
Author(s) -
del Savio Lorenzo,
Loi Michele,
Stupka Elia
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
bioethics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.494
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1467-8519
pISSN - 0269-9702
DOI - 10.1111/bioe.12150
Subject(s) - argument (complex analysis) , affect (linguistics) , scope (computer science) , identity (music) , public policy , face (sociological concept) , epigenetics , psychological intervention , sociology , political science , public relations , social psychology , public economics , law and economics , psychology , law , economics , medicine , social science , genetics , biology , computer science , physics , communication , acoustics , gene , programming language , psychiatry
Recent evidence of intergenerational epigenetic programming of disease risk broadens the scope of public health preventive interventions to future generations, i.e. non existing people. Due to the transmission of epigenetic predispositions, lifestyles such as smoking or unhealthy diet might affect the health of populations across several generations. While public policy for the health of future generations can be justified through impersonal considerations, such as maximizing aggregate well‐being, in this article we explore whether there are rights‐based obligations supervening on intergenerational epigenetic programming despite the non‐identity argument, which challenges this rationale in case of policies that affect the number and identity of future people. We propose that rights based obligations grounded in the interests of non‐existing people might fall upon existing people when generations overlap. In particular, if environmental exposure in F 0 (i.e. existing people) will affect the health of F 2 (i.e. non‐existing people) through epigenetic programming, then F 1 (i.e. existing and overlapping with both F 0 and F 2) might face increased costs to address F 2's condition in the future: this might generate obligations upon F 0 from various distributive principles, such as the principle of equal opportunity for well being.