We open this monograph with examining and discussing some overarching topics that inform a major subtext of whole work: the level of preparation of healthcare professionals to utilize gene-based diagnostics and therapeutics appropriately for the improvement of health and quality of life of entire societies. Included, then, in this section are the ethical beliefs and assumptions of the nursing community, the major efforts toward public policy-making (especially at the national level), and the basic tenets of ethics in health care today. We provide a discussion of the central decision challenge for the use of genetic and genomic technologies in health care by individuals and families: the informed consent.