In DNA Era, New Worries About Prejudice--New York Times

At Cook Ross, in our healthcare cultural competency work, we talk about pharmacogenomics and genetics and its impact. The research is allowing practicioners to be more patient centered. The opportunity is to leverage difference. The challenge is when scientific distinctions are used, like other diversity distinctions (race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc.) have historically been used, to discriminate. With genetics, this could engender a very interesting and in some cases dangerous dynamic in that, as we know phenotypically we may be one thing while our genotypes may yield something totally different. There are also the social implications of people making implicit associations about someone because they have heard or read about one ethnicity or race having something less than or greater than another. . .if in fact greater dichotomy and social division is created from the Human Genone Project we could lose the profound impact of the scientific traction that the deconstruction of DNA has provided.

By AMY HARMON
Published: November 11, 2007

When scientists first decoded the human genome in 2000, they were quick to portray it as proof of humankind’s remarkable similarity. The DNA of any two people, they emphasized, is at least 99 percent identical. . .

Such developments are providing some of the first tangible benefits of the genetic revolution. Yet some social critics fear they may also be giving long-discredited racial prejudices a new potency. The notion that race is more than skin deep, they fear, could undermine principles of equal treatment and opportunity that have relied on the presumption that we are all fundamentally equal. . .

For the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/us/11dna.html?em&ex=1195016400&en=654c92ed2a9ed7fe&ei=5087