Some anticipate that it will herald an era in which all diseases and medical frailties will be revealed, identified and banished. Jack Doyle finds this rhetoric chillingly familiar. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, especially when it is about the genetic composition of human beings. But a little is all we have. And on the basis of it much medical biotechnology assumes that who we are and what we are is determined by our genetic make-up.
Genes are destiny.
Having done this, modern science will then have its 'holy grail', as one researcher put it, the roadmap to begin administering a Golden Age of Biomedicine, an era in which all diseases and medical frailties could be revealed and banished from the face of the earth. And perhaps much more as well. Critics of the Human Genome Initiative fear that it will facilitate a new kind of eugenics and social discrimination. This is already happening, and will become more common as diagnostic testing, genetic screening and the use of new DNA-based identification systems become more widespread. A doctor told a couple that their health plan would be cancelled unless the woman terminated her pregnancy because genetic testing had revealed her unborn child had cystic fibrosis.