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Photo by Reed Hutchinson
UCLA Photographic Services
Genetic information shouldn’t be used to keep qualified
people from being hired, said Paul Steven Miller of the U.S. Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission. |
discrimination in the workplace
The dark side of the genetic revolution
BY DON PONTURO
UCLA Today
With the genetic revolution well under way, the risks of misusing and
abusing newly discovered information about our genetic code are becoming
more threatening, said a commissioner with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC) in a lecture at UCLA.
“The potential for genetic discrimination is real and no longer
the stuff of science fiction,” said Commissioner Paul Steven Miller,
particularly as the cost of genetic tests that reveal an individual’s
genetic predisposition to disease decreases. Miller’s Oct. 1 lecture
in Korn Convocation Hall was sponsored by the UCLA Center for Society,
the Individual and Genetics.
A commissioner for the EEOC since 1994, Miller, who has a form of dwarfism
resulting from a genetic mutation as well as a history of cancer within
his immediate family, questions whether employers should have access to
any genetic information about their employees.
“Genetic information should not be used to exclude qualified employees
from the workplace,” said Miller, who has served on the executive
board of the President’s Committee on the Employment of People with
Disabilities and on the Presidential Task Force on Employment of People
with Disabilities. He has also been a visiting lecturer at the UCLA School
of Law.
“I’m interested in the protection of those who could be
marginalized by this progress,” said Miller. “As we chart
a new course, we must do so with an abiding respect for the rights of
individuals.”
While the genetic revolution began with the 20th-century discoveries
of James Watson and Francis Crick, Charles Darwin and his theory of the
Origin of the Species, formulated in the 19th century, were equally influential.
“Unfortuately, dreadful misapplications of [Darwin’s] brilliant
concept of survival of the fittest prospered [and] led to the misguided
theory that humanity could be corrected by encouraging offspring of the
fit and discouraging or even prohibiting reproduction by the unfit,”
Miller explained. This dangerous distortion of Darwin’s theory led
to the eugenics movement and the forced sterlization of those considered
intellectually or physically inferior, he noted.
In this new age of genetic revelations, however, legal protection is
still in the formative stages. The Americans with Disabilities Act does
not specifically mention genetic discrimination, although 33 states, including
California, have passed laws banning the use of genetic information in
the workplace. In the most recent action, a landmark bill approved by
Congress was on its way Oct. 14 to President Bush. If he signs it —
and the White House has indicated he will — the federal law would
bar health insurers and employers from discriminating against people with
a genetic predisposition to disease.
So far, no genetic employment discrimination case has ever been decided
in a state or federal court, Miller said. The most notable case so far
involved the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, which allegedly subjected
certain employees to genetic testing without their knowledge. According
to a complaint, the railroad was attempting to identify employees who
carried a gene that might make them susceptible to carpal tunnel syndrome.
The case was filed by the EEOC, but settled out of court in May 2002 for
$2.2 million, Miller said.
Miller urged the audience to bear in mind that genetics does not predict
that “an individual will get sick, only that there is a greater
likelihood that he or she might fall ill.” Employment decisions
must be based on the ability to do the job today, not on fears about the
future, he said. |
