In recent years, with the development of DNA tests and genetic knowledge, there has been a growth of genetic counseling services and research in Canada and Japan. Although the uniqueness of genetic services in medicine lies in the preliminary assessment of the entire family rather than a single patient, few attempts have been made by social scientists to examine the technical and social construction of family trees and medical pedigrees. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze how the family data taken by genetic counselors are transcribed as medical pedigrees and used by associated health care workers in different cultural settings. The comparative analysis was based on an ethnographic approach that included participant-observation in genetic counseling sessions, interviews with clinical workers, and content-analysis of medical textbooks. The findings include three major points: (1) cultural views of the family are taken for granted by genetic counselors; (2) the process of documenting family data consists of four stages: primary transcription, secondary transcriptions, combination and publications; (3) the clinical workers' use of medical pedigrees results in the construction of family history as part of the present family illness.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.23729 |
| Date | January 1995 |
| Creators | Nukaga, Yoshio |
| Contributors | Cambrosio, Alberto (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of Sociology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001492203, proquestno: MM12065, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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