SENTIDO > SCIENCE > HEALTH

Current biotechnology research is working on the tracing of genetic markers, certain genes which show statistical coincidence with higher rates of certain diseases. While the connection between these genes and a higher incidence of disease is based on statistical circumstance, and isn't generally a solid indication of any real predisposition, the temptation to use such statistical data for cost-cutting and predictive business strategy is likely to be great.

Without legislation to prevent abuse of this information, without what would amount to the most sweeping privacy protections yet explicitly passed into law, an industry of discrimination is the likely result of this research. Such is the fear of skeptics who warn that the use of genetic markers as guideposts to future disease may create a climate in which insurance providers will rate genetic mapping in a manner similar to current credit rating systems.

There is currently no guarantee that such information will not be used against individuals by healthcare and insurance providers, or indeed by potential employers. Eugenics is a long-standing fear of social scientists, some of whom compare it to Dr. Frankenstein's delusional holy-grail of immportality through manufactured life. Religious groups also warn that tinkering with what they believe is God's design will lead of necessity to unpredictable ill-effects.

The debate is ongoing and by fits and starts a heated one. Apprehensions regarding the possibility of gene-based discrimination are alloyed with the current standard, by which private corporations have been permitted to patent genes whose existence or identity they have "discovered". The ethical conflict here becomes one of fundamental American jurisprudence. Our system is based in the principle of habeas corpus: the individual controls her own person unless found guilty through fair legal proceedings.

Corporate ownership of genes implies that even one's own genetic map may not be privileged medical information. This scientific and even cosmic foundation of one's existence as such, one's biological identity, might be usurped by patent-holders claiming ownership of natural compounds found in every human being. This is a worst-case scenario, but one directly invited by the current state of American law. The competing legal claim would be the universal ban on trading in human bodies and body parts: the same standard that prohibits prostitution, slavery, torture and "cruel and unusual punishment" could be applied to prevent the open trade in genetic information extracted from specific individuals.

The current hope is that the scientific community, and the legislatures with authority over them, will take responsible action to guarantee that genetic profiteering does not undermine the inherent legal integrity of the human individual, and the right to control one's own body and to seek to protect it from disease.

MALARIA PANDEMIC KILLS 2 MILLION PER YEAR
24 June 2004

Anti-malaria activist and missionary groups report malaria is world's unseen pandemic, killing millions but largely unnoticed in the developed world. In April 2003, the United States' Department of Health and Human Services reported that malaria "affects an estimated 500 million people and results in up to 2 million deaths each year", with 90 percent of those deaths concentrated in Africa. The same report estimates an average of 3,000 children are killed every day in Africa by malaria parasites. [Full Story]