Genetic Information in the Workplace

Ethical Issues

That such information could be used to advance organizational interests at the expense of individuals raises several crucial ethical issues, however. For example, businesses could use people's genetic information to separate individuals who carry risks of ill health from employment or to defend against victims' claims for compensation by claiming that the harm is traceable to their genes. Conversely, individuals could use knowledge of their own genetic inheritance to gain advantage over an organization, for instance, by not revealing having inherited an allele associated with the early onset of a degenerative disease to an organization that relies on the individual's remaining well. These and similar possible uses raise concrete ethical questions are about who owns such genetic information and in what circumstances it may or must be revealed, or instead must be considered confidential. Prior to these, however, there are theoretical ethical questions centering on the degree to which individuals should bear social accountability for biological outcomes they cannot control, such as health risks resulting from their having certain configurations of genes.

We cannot be fully free to take advantage of one another's bad luck. For if we were, fear of falling prey to other people when luck deserts us could deter us from productive engagement with one another. So protective constraints that regulate our interactions with one another are basic to cultivating the cooperative climate on which commerce depends. Whether such protections should extend to protecting people against the medical and social consequences of inherited bad health is a matter of conscience as well as of moral, legal, and political debate. The proposition that risk should be distributed beyond the individuals whose health is made problematic by their genetic inheritance raises related questions. Should government, employers, health care providers, or others share the risks and accept the costs?