Picture a world in which your genetic data is packaged in a microchip and carried with you like a new type of ‘health card.’ Imagine that one could find in these chips information on every newborn baby’s potential for developing various diseases, having certain personality traits, or a high or low IQ. Certain physical features and malformations are contained in this chip, too.
It is not difficult to think of potential abuses of genetic profiling. Visions of a world controlled by government and private rules that govern who is allowed to do what based on their genetic profile are easy to conjure. Surely, governments, schools, employers, insurance companies, and more would want, and likely gain access to, this information. This could produce many negative outcomes. Schools could deny the child access to education if his or her potential IQ is below a certain cut-off; a child may be denied employment due to propensities for certain diseases and “undesirable” personality characteristics; life insurance companies could deny coverage.
However, just as with any new technology, one must consider the potential benefits before dismissing it. On Saturday, February 19th, at the Ontario Science Centre a panel of five speakers from fields as diverse as law enforcement and bioethics considered the current and future uses of genetic profiling.
Genetic profiling is already being used in police work. “DNA has been the greatest scientific discovery for the police since fingerprinting; it can be used in the identification of criminals, preventing crimes, and solving crimes,” said Detective Sergeant Clive Richards of the Forensic Investigation Services, Toronto Police Service.
The National DNA Data Bank, located in Ottawa, stores crime scene and convicted offender DNA information. When DNA is found at a crime scene, it can be compared against the DNA of convicted offenders. If a match is found, a culprit can be identified. In addition, matching DNA found at various crime scenes can link separate cases.
Although useful, genetic profiling is not a perfect means of identifying criminals. “Race, which groups humans based on common characteristics…is [often] used to improve the chances of [making a match] between a suspect and a sample from a crime scene,” said Shawn Richards, a bioethicist at U of T’s Joint Centre for Bioethics. This method assumes that samples with racially identical labels will be genetically similar.
This assumption is often wrong. Richards suggests the use of ancestral geographic origin to group people, which is “more precise, and free of the negative connotations associated with race.”
The police are not the only group that can benefit from knowing a person’s DNA sequence. Already, many diseases involving mutations in single genes, such as Down’s syndrome or Tay-Sachs disease, can be identified with genetic testing.
“The use of DNA analysis in medicine really came out of the human genome project. [Researchers] have made a concerted international effort to sequence all the human genes, define every gene, and determine what each gene does. As soon as you identify genes, you can start associating genes with disease,” said Dr. Peter Ray, a molecular geneticist at The Hospital For Sick Children.
This can help doctors identify people with a predisposition to a certain disease and allow them to prevent the disease from escalating, by advising changes in behaviour and prescribing individualized drug treatments.
However, the results of such testing have the potential for abuse as well. Knowing that an individual has a genetic disease will affect not only this individual, but also his/her extended family. For instance, if this information were made public, it would affect the entire family’s ability to get life insurance, even if they didn’t have the disease but carried the gene for it.
Genetic testing can also be used in pharmacogenomics, the genetic investigation of a patient’s response to drug treatment. Because many people do not respond to certain drugs, and many others have adverse reactions to them, having an idea of which drugs are best suited to which individuals could be of great benefit. In addition, genomic profiling, which involves the sequencing of all the genes in an individual at birth, would display “the carrier status of all genetic disorders, all drug sensitivities, optimal treatments, and predispositions to all common diseases,” said Ray.
This all seems beneficial, but pharmacogenomics could lead to drug companies “designing drugs for certain groups,” said Shawn Richards. For example, HIV is a disease that affects people all over the world, including those in Africa and the US. Drug companies would have no incentives to develop HIV drugs specifically tailored to the economically disadvantaged population of Africa, as these people would be unable to cover the costs required for research and development.
Ultimately, we must keep in mind that “science does not make mistakes. Humans make mistakes,” as Ray says. Genetic profiling, just like any process conducted by humans, is subject to error.
