Genes and Civil Liberties

Conclusion Although human genetics research and development are usually presented as “advances,” they may also be setting back our civil liberties on many fronts. Chief among the downsides are increased numbers of widely-available databases that correlate many facets of people’s biology, lives, and activities, as well as increasing incidences of loss of privacy and discrimination. While federal legislation and administrative rules have begun to address these problems, private and governmental data mining grows rapidly as new technological formats are developed and a technological rationality (i.e., “more information is better”) continues to hold sway over public opinion. As society becomes more familiar with genetics, privacy violations and discrimination may decrease but—at the same time—the rationales for increasing the numbers of public information/DNA databases also increases. These negative consequences need to be more fully considered in any public policy decisions about genetic technologies.
Source: ActionBioscience - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: news