user: A few weeks into sixth grade, Colman Chadam had to leave school because of his DNA. 
  
 The situation, odd as it may sound, played out like this. Colman has genetic markers for cystic fibrosis, and kids with the inherited lung disease can’t be near each other because they’re vulnerable to contagious infections. Two siblings with cystic fibrosis also attended Colman’s middle school in Palo Alto, California in 2012. So Colman was out, even though he didn’t actually have the disease, according to a lawsuit that his parents filed against the school district. The allegation? Genetic discrimination. 
  
 Yes, genetic discrimination. Get used to those two words together, because they’re likely to become a lot more common. With DNA tests now cheap and readily available, the number of people getting tests has gone way up—along with the potential for discrimination based on the results. When Colman’s school tried to transfer him based on his genetic status, the lawsuit alleges, the district violated the Americans With Disabilities Act and Colman’s First Amendment right to privacy. “This is the test case,” says the Chadam’s lawyer, Stephen Jaffe. 
  
 When Colman was born in 2000, DNA analysis of newborns was still rare. But he had a congenital heart problem that led to extra tests. That, in turn, led doctors to discover that he carried some genetic markers associated with cystic fibrosis. His markers are no guarantee of a disease though, and Colman never developed any cystic fibrosis. Still, his parents disclosed the information when filling out a medical form to enroll Colman in school. 
  
 That information made its way to teachers, who allegedly told the parents of the two other students with cystic fibrosis during a parent-teacher conference. Those parents allegedly demanded the Chadams remove their son from school. Eventually the the school district allowed Colman to return after missing a couple weeks. 
  
 The Chadams have since moved away from Palo Alto—but the wheels of the legal system are still turning. When the family first sued the school district in 2013, a district court dismissed the case. The Chadams appeal the dismissal to the federal Ninth Circuit court in January. The Departments of Justice and Education have also written a brief in support of the Chadam’s case, which suggests the federal government has taken an interest in the case and its outcome. 
  
 A Railroad Company and Carpal Tunnel 
  
 To experts in genetics law, four letters are conspicuously missing from the legal wrangling: GINA, or the federal Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008. GINA bars genetic discrimination in just two cases: employment or health insurance. That obviously doesn’t include getting education and housing and plenty of other situation where discrimination might happen. “This case is an useful reminder about the limitations of the federal statute,” says Jennifer Wagner, a lawyer and contributing editor to Genomics Law Report. That’s why the Chadam’s case does not rest on GINA but the ADA, where its application to genetic discrimination is untested. 
  
 There is, however, a one example of how the ADA and genetic information intersect. Back in 2001—before GINA passed—the railroad company Burlington Northern Santa Fe was looking for genetic markers for carpal tunnel syndrome in its workers who filed for worker’s comp. (The workers claimed their carpal tunnel syndrome came from operating BNSF machinery; the company was clearly looking for another excuse.) 
  
 The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed suit on behalf of the workers, and they eventually reached a settlement in 2002. The workers got $2.2 million—but because the suit ended in a settlement rather than a court decision, it did not establish a legal precedent for the ADA covering discrimination based on genes. The outcome in Chadam’s case could, if a trial goes forward, spell out exactly who gets to access genetic information and what decisions can be made based on it. 
  
 In the fifteen years since Colman got a DNA test as a baby, tests have only gotten cheaper and more popular. You have 23andMe’s $199 spit test, of course, but also the National Institutes of Health pumping $25 million into baby sequencing studies. “As we do more screening earlier and earlier in life, there’s potential for misuse of information in ways that are harmful, that could potentially discourage parents from seeking genetic testing even if it’s medically indicated,” says Michelle Lewis, a pediatrician, attorney, and research scholar at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. The genetic discrimination future is here. ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| Colman Chadam carries genetic markers for cystic fibrosis, but doesn't have the disease itself, according to his parents. Inside their legal battle against the school district in Palo Alto, California. 
  
 On Oct. 10, 2012, 11-year-old Colman Chadam was pulled out of class at his public middle school in Palo Alto, California, and asked if he wanted to say goodbye to his friends. According to Chadam’s parents, the teacher told him it was his last day at the school. Officials allegedly told the Chadams that the reason for their son's dismissal involved his DNA: Colman had genetic markers associated with the rare disease cystic fibrosis — even though, James and Jennifer Chadam say, he is healthy and has never had the actual disease. The Chadams say that a teacher revealed this confidential information to other parents, who then complained that Colman posed a health risk to their children, inciting the Palo Alto Unified School District to force Colman to transfer schools, according to their complaint. So they sued, alleging that the district violated the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and their son’s First Amendment rights to the privacy of his medical information. Their 2013 lawsuit, which sought to recoup legal fees and damages, was thrown out by a federal court that said there wasn’t enough evidence that the district denied Colman access to a service because it considered him disabled. But this month, the Chadams appealed to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals — and attorneys for the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education are voicing support for the family. As DNA testing proliferates, this case raises broader issues about how genetic information should be protected and shared — not just in schools but also in workplaces and insurance companies. “The family would like a definitive and unequivocal statement from the Ninth Circuit that you can’t just do this to people based on genetic markers alone,” Stephen Jaffe, the family’s attorney, told BuzzFeed News in an interview. “The more people that get genetic testing done, either for medical reasons or recreationally, the more possibility this stuff gets out. … It’s not a great leap to be concerned about what happens to this information.” A spokesperson for the Palo Alto Unified School District said in an email, "The Palo Alto Unified School District cares about and is committed to the safety and well-being of its student population. That said, the case is on appeal because the Federal District Court found the claims insufficient to allege fault on the part of the District. PAUSD continues to agree with the ruling of the Federal District Court." 
  
 Colman’s DNA was analyzed as part of a treatment he underwent after having emergency surgery to correct a heart defect at birth in 2000. From a DNA test, Colman’s parents learned he had genetic markers linked with cystic fibrosis — an inherited disease that creates thick, sticky mucus in the lungs and digestive system. Yet Colman has been monitored ever since and has never developed the illness, his parents alleged in court documents filed Jan. 14. 
  
 Based on the complaint, Colman’s genes appear to contain a mutation or mutations that have been identified in people with — but are not necessarily proven to lead to — cystic fibrosis, Dr. Dennis Nielson, director of UC San Francisco’s Cystic Fibrosis Center, told BuzzFeed News. Out of 2,000 associated mutations, “there are 160 or more we know cause disease,” said Nielson, who does not have direct knowledge of the case. “There will be a bunch more that cause disease that we don’t know that much about. There are a whole bunch of genetic variations that cause minor problems that don’t ever lead to the kinds of problems we really define as cystic fibrosis.” Colman’s genetic makeup wasn’t an issue until summer 2012, the Chadams say, when they moved to Palo Alto. To enroll Colman at Jordan Middle School, Jennifer Chadam filled out district-requested paperwork with private medical information about him, according to the lawsuit. That September, one of Colman’s teachers told another set of parents that Colman “had the disease of cystic fibrosis,” according to the complaint. 
  
 These parents, whom the lawsuit refers to as “Mr. and Mrs. X,” appeared to be alarmed by the news because their children had active cystic fibrosis. People with cystic fibrosis can cross-infect each other and spread germs that lead to lung infections, according to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. (The organization recommends that such people keep at least 6 feet apart and use separate facilities.) School administrators told the Chadams that these other parents had “discovered” Colman’s condition, according to the lawsuit. Mr. and Mrs. X then allegedly asked the district to remove Colman from school, citing concerns about their children’s health — even though the Chadams explained that Colman was healthy. The Chadams’ doctor also defended Colman in a letter, saying that he wasn’t a health risk, according to the lawsuit. To diagnose cystic fibrosis, doctors look for not only genetic mutations, but also a positive sweat test (a high amount of salt in sweat) and a clear symptom like a lung infection. Only then does someone have cystic fibrosis, said Nielson of UCSF. “If he really doesn’t have clinical cystic fibrosis,” he said of Colman, “then he’s not a risk to anybody else.” 
  
 In 2012, when Colman was told he would be transferred to another school, his family sought injunctive relief and settled that case, which ultimately kept him in school. The Chadams later sued in federal court; the district successfully sought to dismiss the lawsuit. The trial court ruled in 2014 that the district had reasonably believed, based on medical advice it had received, that Colman did pose a health risk, and therefore hadn’t violated the ADA. The Chadams didn’t show evidence that the district had denied Colman access to a service, program, or activity because it considered him disabled, the trial court ruled. It also ruled that under the First Amendment, the Chadams could sue only individual employees in the school district, not the school district as a whole. The district cited a letter from a Stanford University doctor recommending that the school remove Colman for the safety of Mr. and Mrs. X’s children, according to court documents. But the Chadams say in court filings they did not know who the doctor was, despite asking the district. 
  
 Jaffe, the Chadams’ attorney, argued in the appeal that the trial court order suggests that “a school district’s real or imagined concern over potential safety issues overrides ... an individual’s First Amendment rights to the privacy of his medical and other information. That is a dangerous holding against which a strong public policy exists.” He cited a 1987 case in which the Supreme Court ruled against discrimination based on the contagious effects of a physical impairment. 
  
 And he argued that the Chadams' case could have broad implications. “Affirming the district court’s ruling in this case will open a wide gap in the wall of privacy protection the law presently affords personal genetic information,” Jaffe continued. “It will implicitly permit unqualified non-medical persons such as school districts, insurance companies and employers to base life-altering decisions on private genetic information. It will cause the public to hesitate or refuse to get genetically screened when to do so may be in their best interests or would assist medical research.” 
  
 He described one hypothetical scenario to BuzzFeed News: “An employer sees some of his employees has a genetic marker … and says ‘I’m going to fire you because you’re a danger to my other employees and I don’t want them getting sick.’ That’s not a great leap.” The Chadams now also have support from attorneys from the Departments of Justice and Education. In an amicus curiae brief filed this week, they argued that the trial court hadn’t had the legal grounds to throw out the case — so it should be revisited. “In view of these straightforward allegations,” they wrote, “the complaint cannot reasonably be construed to allege anything other than that defendant intentionally removed (Colman) from his school, and therefore denied him the benefit of attending his neighborhood school, because of his perceived disability.” 
  
  
  
  
  
 Stephanie Lee is a senior technology reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in San Francisco. Contact Stephanie M. Lee at stephanie.lee@buzzfeed.com. Got a confidential tip? Submit it here. ||||| Germs and CF 
  
 Medical studies show that people with CF are at particular risk of spreading certain germs among others with the disease. This is known as cross-infection. In people with CF, thick, sticky mucus that clogs the lungs also allows germs to thrive and multiply. This buildup makes them more susceptible to developing lung infections. Despite significant progress in treating CF, infections remain a serious problem and can lead to worsening lung disease and death. However, there are steps you can take to lower the risk. 
  
 Lowering the Risk of Cross Infection 
  
 When there is more than one person with CF in your school, it is essential that they be kept a minimum of 6 feet (2 meters) apart from each other. Germs can spread as far as 6 feet through droplets released in the air when people cough or sneeze. 
  
 If there is more than one person with CF in the same school or classroom, the following steps can help minimize the spread of germs between people with CF. These recommendations are based on recent research and have been reviewed by medical experts. 
  
 1. Minimize the time that two people with CF can spend in one place. A minimum 6-foot distance should be maintained at all times. 
  
 Place people with CF in separate classrooms whenever possible. 
  
 If they must be in the same classroom, make sure the individuals are assigned separate desks and or work stations as far away as possible (a minimum of 6 feet) from the assigned location of the other person with CF. 
  
 Assign separate bathrooms and drinking fountains for students and staff members with CF. 
  
 Schedule the students with CF to be in other common gathering areas, such as the gym, at different times. 
  
 Assign lunch tables, lockers, etc. for all students with CF to be as far away as possible from the assigned locations of other students with CF. 
  
 Assign different locations for people with CF to go for their medications, or have the school nurse visit each student in their separate classrooms to administer the medications. 
  
 If a person with CF becomes ill while in school, one student can go to the health office, another to the principal's office and a third to the counselor's office. 
  
 If a student with CF is ill or needs to go to another room or office to get medications, the staff in that office should be notified prior to sending the student to the office to ensure that another person with CF is not present. 
  
 2. Encourage everyone to wash or clean their hands 
  
 Germs can spread when people touch something with germs already on it, like a doorknob or desk, and then touch their eyes, nose or mouth. 
  
 Everyone should clean their hands after coughing, sneezing or blowing their nose and after using common equipment (e.g., a pencil sharpener, lab equipment, etc.). This is especially important during the cold and flu season. 
  
 Make alcohol-based hand gel and or soap and water readily available for all students and staff to use in the classrooms. 
  
 3. Encourage everyone to cover their cough. 
  
 Germs can remain in the air on tiny droplets -- ready to be breathed in. They can also remain on surfaces long after a person has coughed or sneezed on or near them. 
  
 Make tissues readily available and encourage people to cough or sneeze into a tissue and throw it away immediately before washing or cleaning hands. If a tissue is not available, encourage everyone to cough or sneeze into their inner elbow. 
  
 4. Encourage everyone to get vaccinated. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?


assistant: – When Colman Chadam was born in 2000, he underwent extra medical tests after a congenital heart issue was discovered. Doctors learned that the infant carried genetic markers associated with cystic fibrosis, but he never went on to develop the disease. In fact, that test was the boy's only interaction with it—until 2012, when he was kicked out of middle school. His parents had offered up the information when they enrolled him at a school in Palo Alto, Calif., and somehow teachers found out, reports Wired. Those teachers allegedly told parents of two kids with cystic fibrosis during a parent-teacher conference, and suddenly those parents were demanding Colman's removal because their own kids would be more vulnerable to infection. (Per the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, people with CF are known to be able to spread "certain germs among others with the disease.") It all played out a bit like the medical version of thought crime—where potential (or in this case predisposition) is punished—but within a few weeks the school let Colman return, thanks to the family obtaining an injunctive relief; now the Chadams have relocated altogether. Still, their lawsuit accusing the district of violating both the Americans With Disabilities Act and privacy rights is still making its way through the courts, as they appealed to the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last month and got some support from the DoJ and Department of Education, per this amicus curiae brief. "The family would like a definitive and unequivocal statement from the Ninth Circuit that you can't just do this to people based on genetic markers alone," their attorney tells BuzzFeed. The implications could be broad, not only regarding how genetic information can be used, but who gets to make decisions based on the resulting "real or imagined" safety concerns, he adds. (Also, DNA testing can sometimes be too good.)