Word: socialism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Indeed, the almost daily advances in our ability to forecast any of the 4,000 inherited diseases our genes might bequeath us have created such a thorny knot of private, ethical and social issues that the new genetic procedures are the subject of some 20 bills before Congress. In addition, 3% or 4% of the federal investment in the Human Genome Project--about $90 million--is now going to studies seeking to untangle them. One result is the imminent appointment of an 11-member blue-ribbon panel to advise Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala...
...skin can reveal the full length of the human genome, including its myriad flaws. And the 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...
...likely to be at risk for one disease or another. Until then, says Dr. Paul Billings, a geneticist and medical officer with the Veterans Health Administration, medical insurance must be readily available to all. "I would hope," he says, "that by the end of the century, parceling out a social benefit like insurance based on genetics will be seen as just not appropriate...
...novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley envisioned future childbirth as a very orderly affair. At the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Center, in accordance with orders from the Social Predestination Room, eggs were fertilized, bottled and put on a conveyor belt. Nine months later, the embryos--after "decanting"--were babies. Thanks to state-sponsored brainwashing, they would grow up delighted with their genetically assigned social roles--from clever, ambitious alphas to dim-witted epsilons...
Ever since publication of Huxley's dystopian novel, this has been the standard eugenics nightmare: government social engineers subverting individual reproductive choice for the sake of an eerie social efficiency. But as the age of genetic engineering dawns, the more plausible nightmare is roughly the opposite: that a laissez-faire eugenics will emerge from the free choices of millions of parents. Indeed, the only way to avoid Huxleyesque social stratification may be for the government to get into the eugenics business...