Audience Responses to the Discourses of Medical Genetics: Evidence Against the Critique of Medicalization

Abstract

Critiques of the social consequences of the medicalization of hereditary thought have been extensive and have focused on its supposed tendency to increase deterministic thought, perfectionist expectations about one's children, and negative judgments of persons with genetic diseases and disabilities. This audience reception study, how- ever, indicated that affluent, college-educated persons approaching their childbearing years constitute one audience group that perceives the earlier discourse about heredity as more judgmental, more determinist, and more perfectionist than medicalized genetics discourse (p < .001). In addition, exposure to voluntary hereditarianist discourse produced more negatively judgmental attitudes toward persons with genetic diseases and disabilities (p < .001) than did exposure to the discourse of medical genetics.