View Forgiving Dr. Mengele or Miss Evers' Boys. Go to ORP's page and take module for human genetics (post completion certificate in e-scrapbook). Write short essay (up to 5 pages) on implications of Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.
Miss Evers’ Boys is a tale told by the old black nurse, Eunice Evers, as she testifies at the 1973 Senate Investigation into the Tuskegee Study. The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Blacks with Syphilis was a 1932 research project started in Macon County, Alabama funded by the federal government. This study is one which is historically significant as significantly affects virtually all human subjects research conducted today. The study of 412 men infected with syphilis intended to determine is blacks reacted similarly to whites to the long-term overall effects of the illness. The study was severely flawed in that it has since raised many concerns and discussions over the manors in which to conduct ethically responsible research.
The study involved giving the black participants placebo medication and observing the outcomes; In the case of syphilis, this presents a grim, and rather painful reality for sufferers. The study was only ended 40 years after its launch, and only due to the Senate Investigation into it. The film hits a hard note when Miss Evers yells: “If these men had been white.. ..They would have been treated! And the federal government would not have renewed the grant year after year.” This brings up a major problem, is it socially acceptable or even ethical, to superimpose socially constructed differences (i.e. race, religion, class) into research in order to determine if empirical differences exist? To this I swiftly reply, hell no, if we take socially constructed themes into empirical science, we risk the validity of our research. In essence this brings assumptions in to the research which cannot be verified as being true or even causally related to the research of interest.
The Genetic Nondiscrimination Act is a significant piece of legislation and holds many implications for future research. In legal terms, it technically is unconstitutional to place into effect any legislation that specifically targets an individual or group of them. As such the implications of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act hold some logical basis. The GINA states that no genetic information may be used for the purposes of health insurance/coverage or employment. Simply this ensures a potential genocide of sorts, because if hypothetically genetic information could be used in any way, it would open a tempting door to quantify the human experience in a manor deemed “most efficiently effective” which would disadvantage many. To this extent the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act helps ensure natural selection to some degree by ensuring socially constructed notions of genetic desirability do not run rampant.
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