Should Congress pass a bill to require genetic fingerprinting of all babies born in the United States? Why or Why not? Kevin Liu, Hyde Zhuang, Gary Luong

What is Genetic Engineering? Genetic testing allows the genetic diagnosis of vulnerabilities to inherited diseases and can also be used to determine a person’s ancestry. The Human Genome is the genome of Homo sapiens which is stored on 23 chromosome pairs. 22 pairs are autosomal chromosome pairs while the remaining pair is sex-determining.

Doctor Gene testing is the newest and one of the most sophisticated techniques used to test for genetic disorders and examination of the DNA. Gene testing involves carrier screening which involves identifying unaffected individual who carry one copy of a gene for a disease that requires two copies for to be expressed. By obtaining any tissue or blood from a patient, a DNA sample can be scan for mutated sequences which compares the sequence of DNA bases in a patient’s gene to a normal version and flag out the mutation. With the advancements in gene testing people are now living longer. With early detection of a disease, doctors are able to treat the mutated genes before it spreads or develops. If doctors are able to eliminate the problem or such then medicine will no longer be necessary.

Insurance representative The dramatic advances in genetic will soon pose a problem for life or health insurance companies now that the human longevity increases. When individual become aware or acknowledges their health condition, the need for insurance dramatic drops or lowers in profit. Genetic testing will have an immense impact on the insurance industry. If one knows the resultant of their health condition and future fate then insurance become obsolete and useless because there won’t be much in insure

Legislator Considering different ethnic groups, genetic testing is currently affecting citizens of the United States by diagnosing and treating various diseases and disorders, which were previously considered untreatable. Genetic testing will affect citizens by exploiting confidentiality and jeopardizing the rights of individuals. Genetic testing reveals private information that could be misuse and alter important decisions. Citizens might face discrimination from various sources such as the insurance company and potential employers.

Ethicist The ethical issues concerning genetic testing are draining away much needed funds in other more effective mega-science projects, causing anxiety and frustration before treatment is developed, and raising questions about controlling the manipulation of human genetic materials, with controversial foundations in religion and philosophy. These issues play a role in creating policies and procedures related to genetic testing because there will never be a “normal” human sequence, which complicates the discussion of public policy issues. Such genetic variation between individuals makes political and social regulation insufficient.

Sports Commissioner An issue of genetic engineering in sports is privacy. For example, if an athlete has a apolipoprotein E epsilon-4 allele, then that athlete is susceptible to CTBI and Alzheimer’s disease. If this information is leaked out, the athlete’s power to obtain medical and disability insurance may be limited. Also, genetic engineering in sports is unreliable because it is difficult to determine the positive predictive value of a genetic test and to quantify the amount of athletic exposure that will trigger a pathobiologic response. Also, if you could determine what sports your children will be good at a young age, some people say that this knowledge will “limit” them psychologically. However, other people, such as coaches would not object to genetic testing because it would tell them immediately which people have the potential to be a star athlete 1.Genetic Engineering will impact the future of sports because superhuman athletes could be created once gene replacement techniques are perfected. Parents will be able to engineer the genomes of their embryos. Scientists have already found a gene that is associated with elite endurance athletes called ACE.

Conclusion At the beginning, we unanimously agreed that the bill should be pass, as genetic testing is extremely beneficial. However, as we researched and looked at this controversial topic from different perspectives, we began to have doubts due to the violation of confidentiality and other issues. In conclusion, we decided that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages and verify the passing of the bill.