3/11/2017 1 Comment Social Stigmas Behind Gene Testing As mentioned in my previous blog post, gene testing has its many uses and also can lead to many different social stigmas and some outlash from certain civil rights activists and groups.
There will always be a social ethical stigma when dealing with genetic testing for the workforce. In fact, employers get a good amount of flack for pretesting their applicants and filtering out those who do not pass. Employers argue that through genetic testing they can maintain a much healthier and productive workforce. For occupations that do not genetically screen their employees an estimated 390,000 workers contract disabling occupational diseases each year, and one study done by the Bureau of labor statistics reports that over 850,000 total workdays were lost due to illnesses associated with the work site. Some people also feel a false, yet real sense of ethnic segregation when it comes to genetic testing. This is not in the sense that employers are purposefully screening for specific races, but rather that certain races and ethnicities tend to carry certain genetic defects that others do not. For example, a commonly screened for genetic disorder, sickle cell trait, is found in roughly 1 out of every 12 blacks, yet only found in 1 out of every 1000 whites. This can lead to certain minorities speaking out about feeling segregated against in these employment opportunities. Others also argue that employers could be over exaggerating the risks of the workplace, as the tests are not full proof, and the connections between the hazardous work environment and these genetic traits are still not 100% verified and well known.
1 Comment
Cammron Keehley
5/23/2017 09:14:10 pm
Hey Martin,
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