In his book The Lives to Come, Philip Kitcher paints a picture of the near future of genetic testing. In the coming decades, and perhaps even sooner than that, the scientific community will progress in its mission to map the entirety of the possible genetic material of the human species. The most foreseeable outcome of this research will be the ability to test for a wide variety of genetic diseases. Optimistic geneticists hope to find the base code (and by extension, the cure) of what ails humanity, from susceptibility to breast cancer, to propensity for heart disease, even to obesity.
As Kitcher elucidates, our increasing ability to discover the source of genetic diseases, already seen by many as the crowning accomplishment of 21st Century biology, is not without its problems. Testing for genetic diseases will become more frequent in the future, then, perhaps, it will even be mandated for various reasons, including health insurance and job placement. Some dangers of mandatory genetic testing are easy to spot; health insurance providers, in their current operating mode, would be well within their prerogative to deny coverage to individuals whose genetic tests uncover a high likelihood for colon cancer or high cholesterol. However, Kitcher states, this problem is relatively easy to rectify: universal healthcare under which all individuals are covered regardless of their DNA.
There is a much deeper and more serious danger lurking, though. Kitcher contends that widespread genetic testing would lead to the “new pariahs,” a subgroup of the population discriminated against because of their genetic makeup. The most representative example of this type of genetic discrimination is the 1997 movie, Gattaca. Of course, the human race is no stranger to discrimination based on disease. For centuries lepers have been shipped off to remote colonies, and in recent decades, HIV-positive individuals have been relegated to the fringes of polite society. So is genetic discrimination just a new kind of disease-based prejudice? Will DNA data lead to a new class of social pariahs as Kitcher proposes?
In my opinion, no, at least not the devastating caste system seen in Gattaca. Historically, discrimination based on disease has had one thing in common: fear of infection. Leprosy was deemed so contagious that those infected had to be cut off from society, and carriers of syphilis have been plagued with social persecution for centuries. Although much prejudice against AIDS is, in part, actually against lifestyle choices, the fear of infection has always doomed HIV-positive individuals to extreme discrimination. Diseases which are not contagious are rarely cause for social stigmatization. Few, if any, people have been discriminated against because of gout.
Of course, I am being facetious. Humanity has found plenty of characteristics to discriminate against which are not contagious, the most notable being gender, race, and age. However, we do not now discriminate against people with breast cancer. Why would it follow that we will one day discriminate against people with the possibility (or even the probability) of developing breast cancer? The caveat here, of course, is that we discriminate against individuals everyday based on (our perceived notions of) their potential. Unfortunately, the complex interplay between discrimination, the body, and social expectations, is one that cannot be adequately discussed in one blog post.