Genetic counselling: ethical mediation of eugenic futures?

This paper examines some proposals concerning the involvement of genetic counsellors in reproductive decisionmaking. This involvement represents the future situation as being shaped decisively by the "relevant" knowledge of powerful medical and other political interests. The paper deconstructs and reorders this proposed knowledge in order to make it problematic. The projected involvement of genetic counselling backed by claims of ethical expertise is rendered denaturalised and particular, opening a conceptual space for the emergence of other futures. An alternative future in which public communication, not private medical decisions, is given as the primary ethical focus.