So I was debating in an ethics committee over the past weekend, and there was this one bill that caught my attention: DNA Protection Act. When presenting this bill, the author explained that with growing technology, it was now possible for employers to attain these 'maps' of potential employees DNA. From these maps, an employer could find the percentage of how susceptible a person was to a certain disease (such as cancer, Parkinson's, etc). Consequentially, employers can use these maps to exclude certain individuals.
In a way, this reminded me of witch hunts? These people don't even have the disease and are still be discriminated against. What do you think? Also, do you think that employers should be allowed to use such information in excluding certain individuals from a certain job?
Comrade Quien
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Well, it certainly is an interesting question. Incidentally, in my judiciary committee, we also had a bill regulating how long the government would be able to store DNA samples of suspects in federal investigations. It almost failed due to privacy concerns.
On one hand, using DNA bills to obtain "maps" of DNA to look for diseases makes sense and could easily be factored into insurance. For many people, it could even lower their medical bills if companies do not find any markers of a certain disease.
However, DNA can often be used in violating our right to privacy. I wouldn't want someone to know my genetic makeup and then judge me for something I could have or might be in the future. We still do not know for certain how every single marker in DNA relates to its disease, and we risk making hasty judgments when start taking samples and looking at them.
I certainly do not believe it to be fair for employers to bar employees from their jobs based on their DNA, considering DNA often shows only possibilities for diseases, not fact.
-Comrade Eric Wei
This issue reminds me of similar dilemmas presented in the movie "Gattaca," which many of us may have seen in honors biology with Mrs. Church-Williams. If you haven't seen it, it basically takes place in the future where there are technological advancements far beyond the ones we have today. One of these advancements was that whenever a baby is born, a blood test would be done immediately that would show the probability of that baby contracting a disease, such as heart disease or cancer. Ethan Hawke's character in particular had an extremely high probability of developing heart disease, and was therefore excluded from opportunities available to others.
Employers having the ability to access information about the DNA of their employees/applicants is just another means of discrimination. Also, they would only be able to show probabilities, rather than definite information. Also, it is not relevant to how an individual would perform a job (unless the disease they could acquire would not allow them to meet the physical demands of their job.) Discriminating on this basis would be just as meaningless as discriminating based on social status or race.
(Paige Schlesinger)
In the movie Philadelphia, Tom Hanks' character is discriminated against because he has aids. Though it is a movie, this type of prejudice is real.
Employers should not be able to use this type of information in excluding certain individuals from a certain job, unless the disease has a direct effect on the person's efficiency. Using this technology in the workplace could create unnescessary fear as it did in the movie Philadelphia. Tom Hanks was still a perfectly good lawyer, but the others in his firm were afraid of him because they didn't really know about the disease. It creates uneasiness and causes more problems than it solves in most situations.
(Arvind Kalidindi)
Since our genetic make-up isn't personally controlled (yet), the violation of the DNA Protection Act seems to rank pretty high on the list of "All Things Unjust". Think of how many people would be excluded from the work force! Employers would have to define their idea of "ideal DNA," and parents would start manipulating their child's DNA from the time of fertilization in order for their son/daughter to fit in some specific work force. The whole thing would be messy. I understand I am getting a little ahead of myself..but what about silent mutations? They show irregular DNA segments, but still code properly. What about amino acids with different codons? Different combinations allow for the attachment of the same amino acid and therefore the same protein. Which region of the chromosome would be examined? Employers would have to exclude tandem repeats, junk DNA, and introns. What a dilemma!
(Sam Maliha)
Comrade Maliha
To me, the basing of hiring choices etc on an uncontrollable aspect of an individual is discriminatory and thus, a form of a witch hunt. How is this any different than racial profiling?
Instead, it is worse. Racial profiling--I'm probably going to get shot down on this point, but it is true--occurs almost instinctively. There is not a single person on this planet that does not hold some sort of bias or stereotype against some member of a certain race or demographic. While an employer might unwittingly make a decision based on physical or phenotypic stereotypes, the issue with DNA profiling (is that even a term?) is different. It is deliberately discriminating and thus yield a more "serious" type of witch hunt since the people driving the fear and false assumptions are doing so as a conscious decision on their part.
So, to answer your question. No, I don't believe that at this point in time, it is either economically efficient or morally correct to deliberately go out of your way to discriminate against someone due to their genetic makeup.
Most of the results can only harm the employee or prospective employee. Most results are in the form of chances. For example, your genetic makeup might say that one person has a 50% chance of having heart failure but they might never have heart failure. Nevertheless, their health insurance costs go up. Or worse, they don't get hired. How is that possibly beneficial? Sure, sometimes the statistics may be in the individual's favor but an employer is more likely to disregard a person with one negative genetic result rather than hire a person with a ton of positive genetic results. We respond to negative results in a much more proactive fashion in comparison to positive results.
After reading the series of comments after this post I got to wondering about the relationship between this DNA selection process and racial profiling. As Grace said, racial profiling is inevitable in an employer's decisions. Virtually everyone makes assumptions about others based on their race and since typically the employer and potential employee have had little contact, these assumptions may have more of a significant impact. If you don't know a person well, its easy to succumb to judging them based on stereotypes and racial profiling.
First of all I'd like to say that I too am against this DNA profiling. However, it seems to me to be less unfair than the profiling that already takes place. Judging someone based on their potential diseases, though a blatant violation of privacy, is at least rooted in fact. The profiling that already exists based on race, gender, and ethnicity, seems to me to be even more unjust.
Perhaps thinking about this too much. I still think that hiring based on DNA is unfair and realize that racial profiling is much harder to outlaw, but still... Thoughts?
(Molly Dunbar)
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