Positive And Negative On Dna Profiling Essay, Research Paper
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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