For now, genetic testing can be used to help diagnose certain diseases, like Huntington s disease and Cystic fibrosis, but in most cases there is no cure available and little that can be done to treat these diseases. Genetic testing is also used in criminal investigations. When it helps to identify a rapist or murderer, that is a benefit to society, but when testing is forced on a large group of innocent people to try to identify the criminal among them, it violates the right to privacy of the many innocent people in the group. When genetic testing can lead to a cure, or be used to identify the guilty without invading the privacy of the innocent, then it can be used effectively. Until then, genetic testing should only be used with utmost caution.
Genetic testing can lead to discrimination.
Insurance companies hope to use the results of genetic tests to categorize people based on their risk of developing a disease. This would result in some people having to pay high premiums, or being denied coverage entirely, based on information that may never come to pass and supposed risk factors that they have no control over. In business, companies could use this information to deny employment and in fact has. The American Management Association conducted a survey in 1997 that found that 6 to 10 percent of the 6,000 companies in their sample used genetic testing for employment purposes. Besides discrimination, there are also privacy issues that relate to genetic testing.