These days, any scientific discovery is invariably swiftly followed by a call for an ethical debate. It was only five years ago that the mapping of the human genome was completed. However, it was not long before the debate about the societal implications of predicting future illnesses from genetic tests started in earnest.
The US Senate has now passed legislation that would ban discrimination on the basis of findings from individuals' genetic factors. Whilst the bill still requires approval from the House of Representatives, Senator Edward Kennedy has already dubbed the law 'the first new civil rights bill of the new century'
The bill would forbid, for example, the refusal of insurance cover for those whose tests indicate a pre-disposition to suffer from some illnesses at some future date.
This debate is hardly new - there are real analogies with the concept of eugenics, first dreamed up in the UK, then applied with ghastly consequences in Germany and later in the US.
Even today in the UK, if you have an illness like diabetes, you will have an uphill struggle to purchase such products as travel insurance. As far as I know, there is as yet no evidence as to the statistical link between signs of genetic predisposition and the numbers who eventually fulfil that scientific prediction.
I hope that the US bill will become law and that the UK and the EU take a similar approach. The alternative will be the creation of a new world of discrimination - and possibly, by consequence, further public distrust of science and its applications.
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