ArticlePublic health ethics2018
Epigenetics Changes Nothing: What a New Scientific Field Does and Does Not Mean for Ethics and Social Justice.
Article in Public health ethics, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Epigenetics, Resilience, Protective Factors and Factors Promoting Positive Outcomes: A Scoping Review.International journal of developmental neuroscience : the official journal of the International Society for Developmental Neuroscience · 2025Article
- DNA methylation biomarkers of intellectual/developmental disability across the lifespan.Journal of neurodevelopmental disorders · 2025Review
- Researcher perspectives on ethics considerations in epigenetics: an international survey.Clinical epigenetics · 2022Article
- Ethical implications of epigenetics in the era of personalized medicine.Clinical epigenetics · 2022Review
- Exploring the evidence for epigenetic regulation of environmental influences on child health across generations.Communications biology · 2021Review
- Negotiating Novelty: Constructing the Novel within Scientific Accounts of Epigenetics.Sociology · 2021Article
- Prevention in the age of personal responsibility: epigenetic risk-predictive screening for female cancers as a case study.Journal of medical ethics · 2020Article
- Epigenetics, ethics, law and society: A multidisciplinary review of descriptive, instrumental, dialectical and reflexive analyses.Social studies of science · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Recently, ethicists have posited that consideration of epigenetic mechanisms presents novel challenges to concepts of justice and equality of opportunity, such as elevating the importance of environments in bioethics and providing a counterpoint to gross genetic determinism. We argue that new findings in epigenetic sciences, including those regarding intergenerational health effects, do not necessitate reconceptualization of theories of justice or the environment. To the contrary, such claims reflect a flawed understanding of epigenetics and its relation to genetics that may unintentionally undermine appeals to social justice. We provide a brief summary of epigenetic sciences, focusing on phenomena central to the current ethical discourse. We identify three fallacious modes of reasoning arising from the emergent literature on the ethical and policy implications of epigenetics, including mischaracterization, undue extrapolation, and exceptionalism. We end by discussing how these issues may work against mobilizing health equity policies and present a more modest claim regarding the value of new epigenetic knowledge to health justice by setting this discourse within the context of known themes in biomedical ethics and health policy.
Identifiers
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.