Epigenetic Inheritance and the Responsibility for Health in Society

Much has been written about the rediscovery of epigenetics towards the end of the past century, several decades after the coining of the term by Conrad Hal Waddington in 1942. The concept has caught the attention not only of leading research groups and institutions, 1 but also of the media and popular science writers. It has been argued that a quiet revolution in biomedicine is underway 2 as epigenetic processes of gene–environment interaction are now implicated in the aetiology of a wide range of conditions, including obesity and non-communicable diseases such as diabetes. In many cases, the effects of environmental factors seem to outweigh those of genetic variants. Importantly, the notion of the environment in epigenetics includes social context as well as biological exposures, and draws attention to their multiple connections, which raises pressing social and political questions. Who should take responsibility for how social and material environments affect health on the molecular level, particularly given the stark socioeconomic inequalities in most contemporary societies? We argue that interdisciplinary dialogue is urgently needed to address these questions adequately.      «

Much has been written about the rediscovery of epigenetics towards the end of the past century, several decades after the coining of the term by Conrad Hal Waddington in 1942. The concept has caught the attention not only of leading research groups and institutions, 1 but also of the media and popular science writers. It has been argued that a quiet revolution in biomedicine is underway 2 as epigenetic processes of gene–environment interaction are now implicated in the aetiology of a wide rang...     »