DNA Profiling
Genetic engineering has developed and
blossomed at a frightening rate in the
last decade. Originating as merely an
area of interest for scientists, genetic
engineering has now become an area
of which all people should be somewhat
knowledgeable. DNA profiling has many
uses, both positive and negative, in our
society. Aside from its usefulness
in many legal investigations, DNA profiling
can be used in the workplace to
discriminate against employees whose profiles
could pose a financial risk.
For example, genetic technology can and has been
used to determine the
capacity of a person to contract certain diseases, such as
sickle-cell
anemia, which could cause many employers to hesitate in the hiring
and
training of such people. In the early 1970's, the United States began
a
carrier screening for sickle-cell anemia, which affects 1 in
400
African-Americans. Many of those identified as carriers mistakenly
thought they
were afflicted with this debilitating disease. Furthermore,
confidentiality was
often breached, and in some cases, carriers were
discriminated against and
denied health insurance. Nevertheless, genetic
profiling has been beneficial in
paternity suits and rape cases, where the
father or the assailant could be
identified. However, despite its growing
number of utilizations, DNA profiling
is extremely hazardous when results are
inaccurate or used to discriminate. The
frequency of genetic testing in
criminal investigations (more than 1,000 in the
U.S. since 1987) has been
increasing dramatically despite the inconclusive
testing by the scientific
community in many aspects of forensic identification.
A correlation
between DNA patterns taken from a crime scene and taken from the
suspect has
often been enough to charge a person with the offense in spite of
proof that
some procedures for testing DNA are fallible by legal and
scientific
standards. The complexity of scientific evidence, especially DNA
profiling, has
also caused many problems within the legal profession. It is
no longer enough
for attorneys or members of the jury to merely be
knowledgeable about the law.
People need to familiarize themselves with
today's scientific research rather
than relying on the credentials of a
scientific expert witness. Too often, jury
members become in awe of the
complicated, scientific terms used in court and
take a scientist's testimony
as fact. Lawyers need to increase their scientific
knowledge and keep up with
ongoing research in order to competently question and
understand scientific
evidence put forth. But these do not represent the only
possible downfalls of
DNA profiling in criminology. The involuntary seizure of
one's blood or hair
undermines the constitutional rights guaranteed to all
citizens by the Fourth
Amendment (protection from unreasonable searches and
seizures). Nevertheless,
many argue that a DNA sample taken from a suspect could
lead to an indictment
or release of the individual and, thus, warrants an
exception from the Fourth
Amendment. Besides, one could make a plausible
argument that, once held in
custody, the seizure of a person's strand of hair
does not violate a
suspect's Fourth Amendment rights or rights of privacy
because the hair is
visible. However, the use of DNA profiling does not end in
criminal
investigations. DNA testing has ventured out of the courtroom in an
effort to
show a genetic link between race and violent tendencies. If
successful, this
link will do nothing but justify prejudice attitudes toward
minorities,
particularly the black race. Furthermore, such biological approaches
towards
criminality do not take into account sociological factors, such as
poverty,
and would inevitably lead to the practice of controlling minority
children
with the use of therapeutic drugs or worse. For this and other
reasons,
courts of all levels must implement harsher scrutiny in the area of
genetic
profiling and its uses. There is also a current effort to create a
national
database of DNA, much like the existing database of fingerprints.
Supposedly,
the use of numerical codes will allow huge databases to search
for a match of a
individual DNA band. However, these matches are not 100
percent. This
inconclusive correlation between DNA patterns has led to a
heated debate which
has culminated in federal court with Daubert vs. Merrel
Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc.
The ruling in the Daubert case said that the
acceptance by the scientific
community is not enough by itself to allow
certain scientific techniques into
court as evidence, especially given the
reality that a suspects entire future
could hang in the balance of a
scientific finding. Many people have argued that
the use of a national DNA
database infringes on the individuals constitutional
rights to privacy.
However, law officials have claimed that the advantages this
database
presents for society supercede the individual's rights. This dilemma
can
easily be associated to the "social contract" presented by Thomas
Hobbes.
In this contract, Hobbes believed that each individual should give up
certain
individual rights in order to achieve protection from the whole. The
forfeit
of the right to privacy of one's DNA can thus be considered one of
these
forfeited rights. A person must weigh the advantages of having a past,
present,
or future criminal's DNA profile on database with the disadvantages
of having
one's own. But the disadvantages will outweigh the advantages when
private
institutions develop access to this database and use the information
for
discriminatory purposes. The impending usage of a national DNA database
poses
many possible risks of political and commercial abuse of such
information, along
with the danger this information falling into the hands of
unfriendly parties,
are unpredictable. Such unpredictability, certainly, is a
violation of people's
rights to privacy. For instance, if a private
institution, such as a bank, an
employer, or an insurance company, receives
access to this information, it could
influence decisions on loans, hiring
practices, insurance rates, etc. Society,
then, is faced with a conflict
between an individual's right to privacy in one's
genetic composition and the
employer's or insurance company's interest in
knowing about a person's health
problems. This conflict will constitute the
remainder of this paper. Over the
next ten to fifteen years, scientists involved
in the federal government's
"human genome project" will try to
identify in detail each of the human
cell's estimated 100,000 genes. The
knowledge derived from the project will
enable physicians to detect an
increasing number of diseases and
predispositions for diseases. When Frank
married at age 31, he decided to
take out a life insurance policy. A swimmer and
avid racquetball player with
no previous hospitalizations, he felt cer- tain his
low premiums would be a
worthy investment for his family. Weeks later, after a
routine physical exam,
he was shocked by the insurance company's response.
Sophisti- cated DNA
testing had revealed in Frank's tissues a sin- gle missing
copy of a
so-called RB antioncogene and minor variations in two other
genes.
Computer analysis showed the molecular misprints more than tripled
his risk of
getting small-cell lung cancer by age 55. His application was
rejected. With the
newfound ability to reveal an individual's molecular
secrets come significant
new possibilities for discrimination. The medical
records of people who apply
for insurance are stored by the Medical
Information Bureau, a data bank shared
by a consortium of hundreds of
insurers. Ethicists warn that genetic tests could
tempt insurers to
discriminate against the "healthy ill;" people who
are not yet sick but who
carry genetic traits predisposing them to future
illness, such as in Frank's
case. However, these people may not be denied health
insurance totally.
Rather, they may be guaranteed a basic level of treatment and
rationed out of
more costly procedures. For example, someone who carried the
cystic fibrosis
gene, even if asymptomatic, could be denied a lung transplant.
The
competitive nature of the industry may compel insurance companies to
use
genetic information, since the fundamental principle of the insurance
business
is "pooling uncertainty." The concept of adverse selection also
causes
insurers much dismay. Adverse selection refers to the probability that
people
privately aware of a medical problem are more likely to seek medical
insurance.
This negates the insurers policy of setting premiums with
accordance to
statistical information on the rates of illnesses and
sicknesses in society.
"The whole foundation of insurance is based on the
fact that we and the
insurance applicant are operating with equal levels of
knowledge and
ignorance." Without this level of ignorance, insurance
companies will lose
their social value as a means of spreading risk across
groups of people. Genetic
engineering with respect to insurance does not stop
here. Further development
could lead to a complete knowledge of who will
develop a disease and when. This
will drastically effect the practicality of
life insurance policies. "I can
see 20 or 30 years from now that life
insurance policies will be essentially
accident policies, because everything
else will be foreseeable. The essence of
insurance is you assess a risk
against the unknown; if there's no medical
unknown, the only unknown is
whether you're going to get hit by a bus."
Another striking danger of
insurance companies discriminating with respect to a
person's DNA profile is
with infants. The companies may become extremely
hesitant in insuring babies
who have a high susceptibility to certain diseases.
In fact there have
been some cases where the insurers actually demanded the
parents to abort the
fetus or risk losing insurance. This obviously constitutes
a blatant
violation of people's rights. Plus, it dangerously causes the
insurance
companies to begin to play the role of God, that is, in deciding who
should
live and who should not. "By agreeing to pay for some infants and
not for
others, insurance companies could inadvertently practice a form of
economic
eugenics, based not on grand designs for a superrace but on who
requires the
least expensive medical care." Perhaps, some form of national
health
insurance is the only remedy for these problems. "Genetic testing
may provide
the best reason yet for a nationalized health-care policy." But
insurance
companies are not the only private entities with the potential
to
discriminate against people with unfavorable genetic profiles. Employers,
too,
have a substantial financial risk in hiring an employee with an above
average
propensity for illness or early death. Ellen spent four years
completing her PhD
in industrial and chemical engineering. Now, wincing as a
company doctor drew a
few drops of blood for her preemployment physical, she
could hardly contain her
excitement about the job she'd been offered at one
of the country's fore- most
metallurgical research institutes. Two days later
the phone call came. You are
perfectly healthy, the young doctor said. But
tests have revealed you harbor a
gene that can result in decreased levels of
a blood enzyme, glucose-6-phosphate
dehydrogenase. With- out the enzyme's
protection, you have a slightly increased
risk of developing a red blood cell
disease if you come into contact with
certain chemicals in our laboratory.
I'm sorry, he said. The job has been
offered to someone else. As Ellen's case
shows, the danger of discrimination
certainly does not end with health
insurance. There is also a grave danger of
discriminatory hiring practices in
the workplace. In 1989, Jonathan Beckwith, a
geneticist at Harvard, and Dr.
Paul Billings, director of the division of
genetic medicine at Pacific
Presbyterian Hospital in San Francisco, completed a
small-scale study of
genetic discrimination. Of 55 responses, Billings and
Beckwith could
document 29 people who reported multiple instances of
discrimination by
adoption agencies, employers and insurers. And the percentages
will only get
worse as more and more companies implement genetic screening
policies. In a
survey of 400 U.S. firms conducted in 1990, 15 percent of
companies responded
that by the year 2000, they planned to check the health
status of not only
their prospective employees, but their dependents as well
before making a job
offer. These statistics show all too well the impending
problem with genetic
discrimination in the workplace. Employers will have a
number of potential
justifications for genetic testing in the workplace. In some
cases, there may
be an argument in favor of testing for public health
reasons.
Fortunately, judges and juries have predicted these
justifications and have
began to make the necessary rulings to ensure true
justification for
discrimination. The relevant judicial opinions indicate
that there will have to
be a significant or reasonable likelihood of harm to
others from having the
individual employed. Hopefully, rulings such as these
will serve their purpose
in protecting the right of all citizens. With the
balance of interests laid out
(individuals concerned about confidentiality
and discrimination, and insurers
and employers concerned about adverse
selection and fiscal liability), it will
fall upon legislators and the courts
to define the proper use of genetic
information. Policy makers will have to
confront an apparent discrepancy between
the reality of genetic variability
and the democratic ideal that all citizens
are "created equal." The
information itself is not the problem. What
matters is how the knowledge is
used. Scientific advancements are not to blame.
"What science does is give
society opportunities. What we have to do is
look at these opportunities and
then set up the constraints and the rules that
will allow society to benefit
in appropriate ways." Without the proper
constraints, the price of glimpsing
one's medical future is high indeed. DNA
profiling can be an extremely
beneficial tool in the war against crime. However,
when used for
discriminatory purposes, this tool becomes a crime in itself. The
ability to
compare and contrast a person's genetic code with another should not
be taken
lightly, for with this great knowledge comes great responsibility. If
not
used wisely, this ability of the few... will develop into a disability
for
the many.
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