Word: fatales
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...thousands of illegal immigrants entering the U.S. from Mexico each year, the journey north is harrowing enough. But just across the border in California, they encounter a final and at times fatal obstacle. Weary and bewildered, pursued by the Border Patrol and sometimes carrying small children, as many as 150 people a night dart out into the hurtling freeway traffic. Already, seven fatalities have been reported this year. Since the body count began in 1985, the total has reached an alarming...
...during processing. The Government maintains that these chemicals pose little danger to the majority of the population, a position that consumer activists do not dispute. But small numbers of people appear to be acutely sensitive to some compounds. Sulfites, used in wine and on golden raisins, can provoke a fatal asthma-like attack...
...opportunities and dilemmas created by the new genetic knowledge begin even before birth. It is already possible, through a variety of prenatal tests, to determine whether a child will be a boy or a girl, retarded or crippled, or the victim of some fatal genetic disorder. The question of what to do with that information runs squarely into the highly charged issue of abortion. Many could sympathize with a woman who chooses to terminate a pregnancy rather than have a baby doomed to a painful struggle with, say, Tay- Sachs disease or Duchenne muscular dystrophy. But what about the mother...
Adults could be wrongly branded as well. Life- and medical-insurance companies might one day require that potential customers have their genes screened, presumably so that people likely to develop fatal or disabling diseases could be charged higher premiums, or possibly turned away. Insurers have already used a similar policy to avoid covering individuals at high risk for AIDS, a practice now banned in several states. Unless it is prohibited by law, employers could conceivably try to guarantee a healthy work force by asking job applicants to submit to genetic screening. Clearly, there is a potential for widespread discrimination against...
...biblical times, rearranging the germ lines of crops and farm animals to suit human needs, researchers do not advocate extending such genetic tinkering to people. But medical scientists have an obligation to protect humanity against disease and pestilence. Once it becomes possible to eradicate a gene that causes a fatal disorder, and thus keep it from passing to future generations, it will be criminal not to do so. As director of the Human Genome Project, James Watson contends that the research has a crucial humanitarian mission. Says he: "The object should not be to get genetic information...