Legal Aspects of Genomic and Personalized Medicine

Abstract With the advent of fast, high-efficiency, and low-cost DNA-sequencing technology, the ability to study the human genome by analyzing the DNA sequence is growing exponentially, which impacts tremendously on many fields of scientific research. The application of genomics into routine health care is boosting preventive medicine practices and can lead to personalized treatments that can profoundly improve health-care services and most importantly, patients’ quality of life. To this end the expected positive impact of genomic and personalized medicine interventions needs to be framed by a robust legislative framework. In this chapter, we summarize the existing legal framework that governs the delivery of genetic testing and genomic medicine services in various countries worldwide, providing useful insights to determine possible inconsistencies among different countries, and to highlight eventual legislative gaps, possibly allowing for future harmonization of these measures.