On the topic of genetic testing (once again), ethics, and power-knowledge dynamics (News Article)

I ran across this article shortly after we finished class on March 10th, and I thought that it would be of interest to the rest of the class, especially considering our recent discussions on technological advancements and the way that these advancements are often susceptible to ethical abuses.

The original article (https://www.statnews.com/2017/03/10/workplace-wellness-genetic-testing/) discusses how a new bill recently approved by the House, HR 1313, would permit employers to offer significant health insurance premium rebates to those employees who submit to genetic testing. That's the "neutral" explanation of it. The flip side of this narrative is that the bill would effectively permit employers to "punish" those employees who refuse to allow them access to employee DNA, not so much in the form of a fine as much as in the form of a denial of financial benefit: the withholding of a rebate on an otherwise costly health insurance premium, which could amount to thousands of dollars.

The implications of this bill are many, but most important is the implication that the only people who are truly guaranteed their right to privacy (genetic or otherwise) are those people who can quite literally afford it: those employees who have enough money to forfeit a rebate (the above article says of up to 50%).

It's also interesting to consider, once again, the roles of power and knowledge in this situation. In this case, the employers (arguably more powerful) are enabled by another powerful entity (our government) to demand access to knowledge (the genetic information of their employees) from those less empowered, who themselves may not even have access to this knowledge in the first place.

These dynamics highlight the issue of ethical malleability prompted by technological innovation, and the question about whom exactly these innovations benefit (in this case, is it the employers' pocketbooks or the employees' physical/mental well-being?).

On a final note, in the interest of ensuring that I shared valid information, I checked for other perspectives on the story, and looked into the potential motivations of the two websites where I've pulled articles from. Following is a similar article from a site I had encountered before (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/10/us_legislation_forcing_employees_genetic_info/), and I did go as far as checking this story out on snopes (http://www.snopes.com/genetic-testing-bill/). This very practice, once again, highlighted for me the importance of questioning who produced what knowledge, and what authority and motivations they might have to produce it.

Food for thought.