Genetics, bioethics, and big data

Genetic variation likely contributes to individual difference in complex human traits - such as stress-response physiology and personality features including impulsivity and risk taking - that influence the manifestation of antisocial and aggressive behaviours, or criminal offending (Kreek, Nielsen, Butelman, & LaForge, 2005). While a bulk of evidence suggests that common polymorphisms regulating monoamine, dopamine, and serotonergic systems play some role in contributing to aggressive behaviour, then neurobiological mechanisms are unclear, and there remains much to understand about the likely moderating effects of a range of environmental exposures, as implicated in a number of recent studies (Barnes & Jacobs, 2013; Brennan et al., 2011; Lu & Menard, 2017; Tuvblad et al., 2016; Wagner et al., 2010; Zhang, Cao, Wang, Ji, & Cao, 2016). For example, a recent meta-analysis of 27 studies testing the interaction of the monoamine oxidase A [MAOA] genotype and childhood adversities on antisocial outcomes in non-clinical samples (Byrd & Manuck, 2014) suggests that genetic variants traditionally regarded as ‘risk’ variants might be better regarded conferring sensitivity to environmental influences (see also Belsky et al., 2009). In the case of MAOA, accumulating findings suggest that one genetic variant of this polymorphism confers susceptibility to the negative influence of adverse environmental exposures such as childhood maltreatment, while the other variant may confer resilience under conditions of positive environmental exposures (Caspi et al., 2002; lofrida, Palumbo, & Pellegrini, 2014; Zhang et al., 2016). While the earliest molecular genetic studies focused on candidate genes with known effects on nemotransmitter systems that should theoretically impact these traits and behaviours (lofrida et al., 2014), more recent efforts have employed large-scale genome-wide associations stirdies that have failed to implicate these candidate genes (likely due to rigorous thresholds for statistical significance) (Rautiainen et al., 2016; Tielbeek et al., 2017; Tielbeek et al., 2012). Alarmingly, the genetic risk factors associated with impulsive aggression and criminal behaviours have recently impacted the decisions of a jury in Italy (Forzano et al., 2010), where sentences have been reduced in light of the defendant being said to have a genetic predisposition to impulsive behaviours under stressfill circumstances, thereby mitigating the perception of responsibility, but also reinforcing ideas of genetic determinism (Baum, 2011). These are potentially dangerous precedents in an era where biobanking of genetic and other information allows unprecedented access to individual genomic profiles with the potential for them to be brought to bear on myriad criminal proceedings. In this chapter, a discussion of the emerging bioethical issues in the context of modem large-scale biobanking initiatives is presented, in an era when comprehensive understanding of the meaning of genetic ‘risk’ for antisocial behaviour is arguably more slender than the use of large-scale genomic data in this field can currently justify.