Promotion of the Fittest: Genetic 'Discrimination' by Employer and Ins

[Dave Baker]

In an article in the New York Times magazine on July 23, 2000, the author argues that genetic discrimination by employers and insurers is rational and shouldn't be illegal.

"Genetic testing is not a reversal of the principle behind insurance; it's just an elaboration of it," says Andrew Sullivan, in his Counterculture column.

Here's the link to the New York Times site (free registration required); not sure how long they'll keep the content online: http://www.benefitslink.com/links/20000724...24-006319.shtml

Your comments? Post 'em here!

[Guest glevins1]

The NY Times article championing genetic discrimination is based, in part, on faulty analogies.

First, the article's analogy between genetic testing and the SAT exam for college entrance overlooks the fact that the SATs consistently, because of their use to select the "best" students for college admission, bar a large number of perfectly qualified students from admission to a particular college. Their exclusion does not rest upon the probability that the group of students denied admission will not succeed in college and in later life, but upon the simple consequense that other students have received higher grades, etc., in their secondar educations.

So too would genetic testing bar or "eliminate" (from employment, insurance, etc., etc.) a group of individuals whose genetic profiles weren't as "clean" as another group, despite the fact that the excluded group would likely prove as successful, if not more so, than the favored group.

Secondly, the article's conslusiuon that genetic profiling would, in the end, compel the establishment of national health insurance is simply fatuous. The U.S. is the only industrialized nation in the world that lacks such a system. That failure is based on greed, on the part of insurers, and ineptitude and self-interest on the part of our legislators. Those traits will only be embelished, and not eliminated or even curbed, by genetic profiling.

What it all boils down to is the type of world in which we want our children and future generations to live.