Besides the various social, scientific and health concerns raised by commercialized genetic testing, I'm wary as to how this information could be used, or misused. Major online communications and information centers already make use of the data they collect to further the agendas of other businesses or their own ventures; Google, Facebook, and Twitter immediately come to mind. With DNA testing the potential issues are even deeper: is it really okay to give such fundamental human data to companies? Even if they can only sequence a minuscule fraction of DNA for now, technologies always improve. And even though genetic information has only been semi-confidently connected to traits and physical conditions, the techniques of analysis may become more accurate. If this goes further and becomes more popular, could we be living in a real-life "Gattaca"? I've heard that blood type is a big thing in East Asia, which is otherwise a fairly homogeneous area.
I feel, however, that the problem of racial/ethnic stigmatization touched upon in the Lee reading is more of a somewhat localized societal issue. Without stigmatization in the first place, I don't think ethnic groups would even exist. I've read that in places such as Brazil, human types are much less clear-cut: you could be "Chicano" one week and "Moreno" the next. It seems that focusing on the fact that people are individuals with certain traits, rather than focusing on traits being shared by so-and-so type of people, would cut down on stigmatization ethnic profiling. Of course it's no secret that people are inclined to band together on the basis of ancestral or cultural identity, but it certainly has its drawbacks.
No comments:
Post a Comment