Welcome to the NIREHG

The National Information Resource on Ethics & Human Genetics, funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, supports information services - for example, bibliographic databases searchable via the Internet, the full text of online annotated bibliographies, and print publications - on topics related to ethics and human genetics.

NEWS!

The NIREHG Bibliographers have drafted the Bioethics Thesaurus for Genetics, an update to the genetics terminology of the Bioethics Thesaurus along with a hierarchical "tree" showing relationships between terms. These indexing terms are now searchable as Keywords in many documents in the GenETHX database, supporting more precise searching of the genetics literature.

GenETHX, the Genetics and Ethics Database now contains over 38,700 citations, many with abstracts or links to fulltext, to literature on ethical, legal and social implications of genetics research and practice. Researchers may perform their own searches on the database, request a custom search, access automatically-retrieved “QuickBibs” on genetics topics, or get a list of the most recently added citations. Ready access to fulltext materials on the Web is available through the Digital Collection Project.

The Kennedy Institute is participating in two of the recently-established Centers for Excellence in Ethical, Legal and Social Implications Research (CEER) funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute. Two Library and Information Services staff members track government policy and provide specialized reference services for Case Western Reserve University's Center for Genetic Research Ethics and Law, headed by Eric Juengst, Ph.D. The Duke Center for the Study of Public Genomics directed by Robert Cook-Deegan, M.D., includes support for the DNA Patent Database established and maintained at the KIE.

Last updated: May 2008