Did you just say what I think you said? Talking about genes, identity and information

Genetic information is becoming increasingly used in modern life, extendingbeyond medicine to familial history, forensics and more. Following this expansion ofuse, the effect of genetic information on people’s identity and ultimately people’s qualityof life is being explored in a host of different disciplines. While a multidisciplinaryapproach is commendable and necessary, there is the potential for the multidisciplinarityto produce conceptualmisconnection. That is, while experts in one field may understandtheir use of a term like ‘gene’, ‘identity’ or ‘information’ for experts in another field, thesame term may link to a distinctly different concept. These conceptual misconnectionsnot only increase inefficiency in complex organisational practices, but can also haveimportant ethical, legal and social consequences. This paper comes at the problem ofconceptual misconnection by clarifying different uses of the terms ‘gene’, ‘identity’ and ‘information’. I start by looking at three different conceptions of the gene; theInstrumental, the Nominal and the Postgenomic Molecular. Secondly, a taxonomy offour different concepts of identity is presented; Numeric, Character, Group andEssentialised, and their use is clarified. A general concept of Information is introduced, and finally three distinct kinds of information are described. I then introduce ConceptCreep as an ethical problem that arises from conceptual misconnections. The primarygoal of this paper is to reduce the potential for conceptual misconnection whendiscussing genetic identity and genetic information. This is complimented by threesecondary goals—1) to clarify what a conceptual misconnection is, 2) to explain whyclarity of use is particularly important to discussions of genes, identity and informationand 3) to show how concept creep between different uses of genetic identity and geneticinformation can have important ethical outcomes