Word: commonization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Zittrain explained that the public trustclause--a "pretty obscure" constitutionalprovision--denies the government the right to giveaway property belonging in common to the people...
...potential for abusing that information is already here, as a surprised Paul Billings found in surveys of testing abuses that he conducted. "I advertised for people who had had negative experiences with social agencies, insurers or employers after genetic diagnosis, and I was shocked by the response." The most common complaint was against hard-nosed health insurers, but many talked of being denied a job or losing a promotion. Some even reported that they had been prevented from adopting children because of information found in genetic tests. Billings recalls, for example, a couple who had a child with phenylketonuria...
...hadn't. But when it comes to scientific advances, human beings have often been a slapdash species--racing out ahead with a new technology before fully appreciating its power. If DNA fingerprinting should get into the wrong hands, society's law-abiding members may find they have more in common with its lawbreakers than they ever dreamed possible...
...compulsory sterilization of all German citizens--not simply those in custody or institutions--who displayed symptoms of a number of presumptively hereditary afflictions, including blindness, schizophrenia and offensive physical deformities. Government officials countered potential objections about the cruelty of this measure by asserting that personal sacrifices would serve the common weal. "We go beyond neighborly love," said one. "We extend it to future generations. Therein lies the high ethical value and justification of the law." As Kevles notes, the Nazis' draconian eugenics program did not originally encompass the anti-Semitism that later so rabidly characterized the Third Reich...
...life of the famed "bubble boy" in 1984. Because of a faulty gene, the T cells of her immune system were unable to produce an enzyme, ADA, necessary for their survival. As they died off, Ashi's immune system virtually shut down, leaving her vulnerable to a host of common childhood diseases, some of which could have killed...