DNA Testing from Different Perspectives

            Our readings this week took two opposing stances on the use of DNA technologies as a way to identify individuals. Bolnick and Lee were able to make somewhat convincing arguments against the use of these technologies by weighing the shortcomings of the tests’ relative inaccuracy with the impact of the results on social mindsets. Wagner, on the other hand, gave us a more positive outlook on these tests by showing the closure they can provide in times of sweeping loss and disruption.

            In her piece on commercialized genetic ancestry testing, Bolnick points out that the public demand for this information is rooted in deeply personal relationships with identity, ancestry, and individual history. The information provided by these tests, then, can strongly impact a person’s sense of self and may even lead them to “reshape their personal identities” (Bolnick 399). By reshaping the individual there are various subsequent social and economic impacts that may result, including increased difficulty in tracking social views and responses to race. With these consequences in mind Bolnick shows that the information resulting in these consequences may be completely inaccurate, rendering the possible individual pain and social complications entirely unwarranted but still very real, as few understand the faults that plague these tests and instead trust them wholeheartedly as undeniable truth.

            In Lee’s piece on genomics testing in medical research she attempts to bring the lack of a biological existence of race into accord with the use of race as a means of increasing research representation of minorities. She tackles the issue of needing to define an entity as adequately different in order to give reason for it to be treated differently than it currently is. In terms of this paper, Lee recognizes that minority racialized groups are underrepresented in medical and pharmacological research and that, in order to increase their representation, they need to be somehow distinguished from the white males on which this research is typically done to convince people that their representation will improve their care. The balance that thus ensues is whether noting this difference does more to achieve the goal of increased equity of care or to reinforce stigma surrounding the group. While Lee spends a lot of time pointing out the negative impacts of the use of race in medical research, she doesn’t seem to provide much in the way of how to balance race for equity and race for stigma.

            Sarah Wagner gives a positive portrayal of DNA testing in her discussion of Srebrenica after the July 1995 genocide. In this situation, the testing is used to identify unknown remains in order to provide closure to surviving family members. We see the use of this technology here contrasted with DNA testing in medical or ancestry settings in that the results of the tests in Srebrenica are not assigning any new identity to an individual. Instead, they are returning an identity to someone who had theirs completely obliterated just before and after their death. We receive the concept of testing much more positively here because questions are being answered about the whole person (Who is this?) as opposed to questions being raised about aspects of the individual (Where did I come from and how am I different from others?).