Word: testes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...genes, such as who is likely to develop Alzheimer's. These predictions are widely regarded as the apple of knowledge, which we might be better off not tasting. There is a general feeling that it is wrong for a person's life chances to be determined by a test tube of blood. According to this reasoning, the only issue for public policy is what to do about it. Forbid or discourage genetic tests? Strict rules about what they may or may not be used for? We can't yet prevent Alzheimer's, but we can at least try to prevent...
This revulsion at fate-by-genetic-testing is understandable and admirable. It's also a bit crazy. That's because the sorting of people according to their genes goes on in all kinds of ways that don't involve drawing blood. It's not necessary to know the actual gene involved. In fact, the human condition can be thought of as one big genetic test. When a caveman lost his woman, or his life, to another caveman, that was a genetic test...
...undergoing genetic tests every day, and our life chances are being influenced by the results. A blood test for, say, an Alzheimer's gene is different in only two ways. First, the test is separate from its social application. By contrast, when the cavemen fought, the genetic measurements and their use as a way of ordering society were intertwined and simultaneous. Second, discrimination based on blood tests is punishing people on the basis of mere probabilities. Yet how much do these distinctions matter? If insurers and employers discriminate against people with an increased risk of getting some dreadful disease, they...
...there is something unfair about sorting and rewarding people based on the genes they were born with and have no control over. Good. That feeling should be encouraged. The proper lesson is not that there's nothing wrong with discrimination based on what a lab technician finds in a test tube of your blood. The proper lesson is that a lot of the sorting and rewarding in society works essentially the same way. And whatever upsets you about genetic testing ought to apply to matters larger than a slightly increased chance of getting colon cancer...
...York Times for Oct. 4, 1951, the day after the game. He discovered something that produced what he now calls "a hush in my mind": the Giants' triumph headlined three columns wide on the left and a headline in an identical format on the right announcing a Soviet nuclear test. "Different kinds of conflict," DeLillo remembers musing, "two shots heard 'round the world...