"Sorry, Mr. Smith, we can’t offer you the job."
"What’s the problem? You need workers and I have the experience."
"Yeah. But our genetic screening showed that you’re susceptible to several types of cancer."
"That has nothing to do with this job."
"It has everything to do with insurance premiums. The insurance company would classify you as ‘high risk.’ Management just doesn’t want to pay the extra premiums. We hope you have better luck elsewhere."
"How am I supposed to have better luck when companies are all using the same genetic screening test?"
"I’m very sorry, Mr. Smith. I feel your pain. It’s just company policy."
There’s something wrong with this conversation. Why is it very unlikely to happen? It’s not because corporations won’t use genetic screening. Researchers are giving more and more information to insurance companies about who could catch what disease. Nor is this conversation an unlikely event because companies are too moral to use genetic information when hiring.
The reason that you will probably never hear that you are being passed over because of genetic screening is that corporations fear lawsuits if they tell you the truth. A much more likely scenario is Mr. Personnelmanager telling Mr. Smith that the genetic test had nothing to do with his not getting the job.
As researchers furiously seek to uncover genetic codes which show predisposition to various diseases, public relations scam artists prepare news clips assuring us that it’s to improve our health care. Supposedly, by knowing who is susceptible to what, medical researchers will be able to prescribe preventive care.
But will preventive care serve everyone equally? Or will its benefits go to the elite while the rest of us hear a different story? "Sorry, that type of treatment is not covered by this HMO." "Sorry, but your insurance policy is being cancelled." "Sorry, but we will not be able to hire you."
As issues of genetic screening make the news in the next few years, they will be accompanied by politicians bemoaning genetic discrimination and swearing that they will enact legislation to prevent bias based on genetic tests. Such laws will probably be as effective as those that ban sexism and racism in hiring. (Don’t hold your breath waiting for jails to be filled with employers who break the law.)
Genetic discrimination will affect more than a tiny percentage who contract rare diseases. For example, sickle cell trait is found in 10.0% of African-Americans, though only 0.2% contract the disease. Since many, many more working people carry genes for diseases than will actually contract them, a very large number can be victims of discrimination.
Biotechnology includes the inertwined issues of genetic screening, genetic engineering, worldwide trade in human genetic material, patenting of seeds and other life forms, and the monopolization of food production. Just as the biotech industry claims that genetic screening holds miracle cures, they promise great wonders will come from research on cloning and fertilization.
"Good morning Ms. Jones. You have a healthy litter of six. If all of you pose for some pictures, the diaper company will give you this, the baby food company will give you that, and the University of Biobusiness will give the entire litter four years of free indoctrination. Now smile for the camera as we explain how each zygote was spliced with a gene carrying the respect-for- authority trait."
In the context of disastrous overpopulation and millions of children in the world roaming streets because they have no family, the orgy of TV coverage of human litter births is one of the more obscene spectacles on the tube. We can only wonder why they are so desperate for us to believe that having six fertility drug babies at a time is somehow good. Is artificial fertilization merely to ensure that childless white couples can be spared the pain of adopting a brown child, the agony of adopting a yellow child, or the utter horror of adopting a (gasp!) black child? Or is the transparent racism of those who fund fertilization research surpassed by even more sinister motivations? Do they fantisize a brave new world where men with genetic traits judged to be positive for the work force are selected to impregnate women chosen to be breeding machines for capital?
But the greatest threat posed by biotechnology is to indigenous peoples whose cultures evolved long before there was an owning class and laboring class. Today, when capitalist culture has infested every corner of the globe, native cultures are being destroyed at one of the most rapid rates in history.
The medical industry wants this extermination slowed for a bit. It has figured out that some indigenous peoples have genetic structures which cause resistance to certain diseases. Does this make them dedicated to preserving native peoples so that their genes will always be available for extraction? Not exactly. Marching in line with corporations who fund them, medical researchers have figured out how to extract genetic material from native peoples and preserve it long after the donors have departed.
Thus was born the Human Genome Diversity Project. It loudly proclaims the great medical benefits it will reap for mankind by "harvesting" genes from peoples across the globe before they misteriously disappear or blend into surrounding genetic structures.
Of course, once genetic material is freeze dried, big business will no longer have any need for its donors. The Human Genome Diversity Project lays the foundation for the final extermination of indigenous peoples who have managed to survive to the end of the twentieth century.
Many believe the the threat of biotechnology is not due to some inherently evil nature of genetic knowledge, but because knowledge gained to serve corporate greed is inevitably used as a weapon against any who stand in the way of corporate expansion. In a different world, we might welcome information on gene structure and disease prediction (though in 1998, it is difficult to imagine how this information can possibly be more beneficial than simply giving people food, shelter and medical care).
Environmentalists from across the US will be getting together July 17 - 19, 1998 for the "First Grassroots Gathering on Biodevastaton: Genetic Engineering." Hosted by the Gateway Green Alliance, Pure Food Campaign and the Edmonds Institute, the gathering will be in St. Louis, home of Monsanto, the most powerful single player in the US biotechnology industry. The first group to become a cosponsor was the St. Louis branch of the IWW. If you want to find out more about the Gathering on Genetic Engineering, call the Gateway Greens at 314-727-8554 or send an e-mail to fitzdon@aol.com See you in St. Louis.