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alexsarllA Nobel-winning geneticist has called for a ban on genetic discrimination. He compares it to the ban on discrimination by race or sex. The point is, those forms of discrimination were unfair. Women aren't naturally hysterical. Blacks aren't naturally lazy. Gays don't attract enemy radar. Surely a life insurer has every right to insist on a genetic survey, just as a house insurer is entitled to demand a survey on the house? Certainly, it so far seems that genes show predispositions rather than inevitabilities. It would be unfair to refuse insurance to someone because they were genetically prone to heart disease; it would not be unfair to insist they took compensatory measures in their lifestyle if they wished to be insured.
A weekend update will follow once I'm clearer what actually happened. I didn't make it back to North London until dawn was already showing her face on Sunday morning, had a day in a dream-like state and then a dream in a day-like state. I'm fairly confident that I did in fact see two of the stars of Shameless outside my front door. I'm fairly confident that Robert Mugabe didn't in fact turn out to be an old family friend who was going to give me Zimbabwe when he retired. Much else, however, is more obscure.
In the meantime, would anybody like the new album by that lamentable twit Graham Coxon? From what I can make out, for the most part it's a series of whinges about Camden druggies. Given that I live within walking distance of Camden and I couldn't care less, heavens know who the intended audience is.
edit: Offer closed in doublequick time. I despair of my friends' taste sometimes.
A weekend update will follow once I'm clearer what actually happened. I didn't make it back to North London until dawn was already showing her face on Sunday morning, had a day in a dream-like state and then a dream in a day-like state. I'm fairly confident that I did in fact see two of the stars of Shameless outside my front door. I'm fairly confident that Robert Mugabe didn't in fact turn out to be an old family friend who was going to give me Zimbabwe when he retired. Much else, however, is more obscure.
In the meantime, would anybody like the new album by that lamentable twit Graham Coxon? From what I can make out, for the most part it's a series of whinges about Camden druggies. Given that I live within walking distance of Camden and I couldn't care less, heavens know who the intended audience is.
edit: Offer closed in doublequick time. I despair of my friends' taste sometimes.
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non sequitur
Date: 2004-05-17 02:20 am (UTC)Re: non sequitur
Date: 2004-05-17 02:28 am (UTC)Barry, I'll have the album, I often feel I don't listen to enough kids music these days. Will you throw in the MUTANTS book too? I'll swap you for er, I dunno. Something.
Re: non sequitur
Date: 2004-05-17 02:31 am (UTC)Re: non sequitur
Date: 2004-05-17 02:32 am (UTC)Re: non sequitur
Date: 2004-05-17 02:32 am (UTC)Re: non sequitur
Date: 2004-05-17 02:34 am (UTC)Really?
I mean, really?!
GIN IN A TIN. Excellent. I don't even care if you've made it up now, I'm blogging this.
Re: non sequitur
Date: 2004-05-17 02:37 am (UTC)Re: non sequitur
Date: 2004-05-17 02:40 am (UTC)*Purely For Research Purposes -> an acronym that I always wish would catch on more than it actually has.
Re: non sequitur
Date: 2004-05-17 02:44 am (UTC)Re: non sequitur
Date: 2004-05-17 02:28 am (UTC)Re: non sequitur
Date: 2004-05-17 02:38 am (UTC)Re: non sequitur
Date: 2004-05-17 02:54 am (UTC)Re: non sequitur
Date: 2004-05-17 02:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 02:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 02:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 02:28 am (UTC)(man, robert mugabe and rod stewart in 48 hours, life is a little weird in mel head)
no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 02:29 am (UTC)Tinkerbell and Jack the Ripper
Date: 2004-05-17 02:31 am (UTC)Being carefully, correctly wrong :P
We drink elixirs that we refine from the juices of the dying
Date: 2004-05-17 02:35 am (UTC)In the jungle of the senses
Date: 2004-05-17 04:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 02:38 am (UTC)They're not going to do that, though, are they? Because they're insurance companies and evil and stupid.
Because the pleb thinks that genes do show inevitability, not tendencies. The pleb thinks that your genome is immune to outside influences and can tell you everything.
It's unfair to discriminate by sex or race even when certain races or sexes are more prone to certain illnesses. That is a form of genetic discrimination.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 02:58 am (UTC)Because the pleb thinks that genes do show inevitability, not tendencies. The pleb thinks that your genome is immune to outside influences and can tell you everything."
Well the problem there, then, is plebs being plebs, not genetic discrimination per se. And any laws framed on the matter ought certainly to prevent PBP. As should most laws. Man, if only we could find the gene
forshowing a disposition towards peonism."It's unfair to discriminate by sex or race even when certain races or sexes are more prone to certain illnesses. That is a form of genetic discrimination."
The thing is, where a certain sex or race are better at something directly relevant to the task at hand, then does that really count as discrimination in the word's negative sense? Jobs where you have to be a certain height or have a certain amount of strength, for instance, will inevitably be open to more men than women. And it's not unfair discrimination to refuse a pygmy a place on a basketball squad.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 03:09 am (UTC)No, it's plebs discriminating on the basis of genes. Ignorance is not an excuse. It's not an excuse when plebs think women are hysterical, it's not an excuse when plebs think people with a certain gene will die at 40.
The thing is, where a certain sex or race are better at something directly relevant to the task at hand, then does that really count as discrimination in the word's negative sense? Jobs where you have to be a certain height or have a certain amount of strength, for instance, will inevitably be open to more men than women. And it's not unfair discrimination to refuse a pygmy a place on a basketball squad.
But it is (legally) unfair to refuse a man life insurance because men die earlier than women.
You can tell a pygmy is short by measuring him. You can't tell he's short by looking at his genome.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 03:23 am (UTC)Sure. So frame a law which bans ill-informed, unjustifiable or excessive discrimination on grounds of genes. Any law which bans *all* discrimination is liable to be a bad law; I do not want to see a50/50 (or 51/49, or whatever it is in the population at large) gender equality ratio imposed on the fire service, y'know?
"But it is (legally) unfair to refuse a man life insurance because men die earlier than women."
True. But as JDC points out below, they get charged a premium. As they do with car insurance, I believe.
"You can tell a pygmy is short by measuring him. You can't tell he's short by looking at his genome."
Surely you will be able to sooner or later, though? Or at least, know the parameters for his height, subject to diet, environment &c?
But in any case, that was an argument by analogy.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 03:43 am (UTC)No, because you won't get that without gender discrimination, because the population demographic of those people who fit the physical requirements (and other factors) for the fire service is not 50/50.
HOWEVER, you can't tell if someone will be a good fire officer by counting y chromosomes, or any other genetic factors.
True. But as JDC points out below, they get charged a premium. As they do with car insurance, I believe.
I'm not sure, but I think there have been successful legal actions taken against insurance companies for doing that.
As to whether they should or not, I'm undecided. However, from the OP I got the impression that you thought they shouldn't. I'm just pointing out that sex and race discrimination are forms of genetic discriminition. (insurance is different to other forms of discrimination, of course...)
Surely you will be able to sooner or later, though? Or at least, know the parameters for his height, subject to diet, environment &c?
But that environment could include being stretched on a rack on a daily basis or artificially pumped with HGH until he's 7'9". You just can't tell. You can get a generalisation, but not enough to know whether this individual would be a good basketball player.
But in any case, that was an argument by analogy.
You were using race discrimination as an analogy to genetic discrimination. I say they're the same thing. You can't tell if someone's going to be good at a job by looking at the genome any more than by knowing their ethnicity. Your basketball playing pygmy can't play basketball because he's short, not because he's genetically a pygmy.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 04:06 am (UTC)I'm not sure, but I think there have been successful legal actions taken against insurance companies for doing that."
I'm fairly sure there's at least one car insurer that's *only* for women, though admittedly I've not seen their ads recently.
"As to whether they should or not, I'm undecided. However, from the OP I got the impression that you thought they shouldn't. I'm just pointing out that sex and race discrimination are forms of genetic discriminition."
Well Sulston said this too, but I felt the way in which he said it was misleading. Women/men, blacks/whites, are not bad/good dichotomies, any more than brunette/blonde is, and it was absurd that they were treated as yardsticks for so long, and still are in so many places. But that book on mutants I'm reading at the moment is full of genetic fvck-ups that *are* simply and unequivocally Bad News.
"You just can't tell. You can get a generalisation, but not enough to know whether this individual would be a good basketball player.
But in any case, that was an argument by analogy.
You were using race discrimination as an analogy to genetic discrimination. I say they're the same thing. You can't tell if someone's going to be good at a job by looking at the genome any more than by knowing their ethnicity. Your basketball playing pygmy can't play basketball because he's short, not because he's genetically a pygmy."
Look at it this way; since the WTC, many people of Middle-Eastern extraction, or dressed Islamically, have complained of extra security hassles when flying or whatever. So long as they are simply being treated with extra caution, rather that treated as de facto guilty, I think that's justifiable, because it is likely (though not guaranteed) that any further al Qaida action would be taken by persons fitting those descriptions. Similarly, if someone were genetically prone to Condition A, while it should not be legal to deny them employment on those grounds ("We're not hiring you because you're going to get cancer and need loads of sick pay"), it doesn't seem unreasonable to take precautionary measures based on that information ("Since you are prone to lung cancer, if we did hire you we would not be keen to see you nipping out for a fag break").
no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 04:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 04:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 04:26 am (UTC)Diamond. I think they've been told by courts that they can't do that. I certainly heard of one man successfully taking such a compnay to court.
But that book on mutants I'm reading at the moment is full of genetic fvck-ups that *are* simply and unequivocally Bad News.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Bad News because they have poor health, or Bad News because they deserve to be disicriminated against? I thought you were talking about situations where all people were accepted and denied things like jobs and the like based on their genome, not about rare 'mutants'.
Look at it this way; since the WTC, many people of Middle-Eastern extraction, or dressed Islamically, have complained of extra security hassles when flying or whatever. So long as they are simply being treated with extra caution, rather that treated as de facto guilty, I think that's justifiable, because it is likely (though not guaranteed) that any further al Qaida action would be taken by persons fitting those descriptions.Similarly, if someone were genetically prone to Condition A, while it should not be legal to deny them employment on those grounds ("We're not hiring you because you're going to get cancer and need loads of sick pay"), it doesn't seem unreasonable to take precautionary measures based on that information ("Since you are prone to lung cancer, if we did hire you we would not be keen to see you nipping out for a fag break").
False analogy. A reaction to a security guard towards someone that looks like a security risk is not comparable to hiring a person. You can't say to a muslim "we'll hire you, but deny you certain priviledges that non-muslim employees enjoy, because you're statistically a security risk".
no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 04:46 am (UTC)I'm not sure what you mean by that. Bad News because they have poor health, or Bad News because they deserve to be disicriminated against?"
Bad News in that quite simply, it is better not to have most of the conditions detailed. It is not better to be male, or better to be female. It is better not to be cyclopic.
"I thought you were talking about situations where all people were accepted and denied things like jobs and the like based on their genome, not about rare 'mutants'."
Much of the point of the book is that we are all mutants; the grotesques one associates with the term simply provide a ready-magnified example which aids easy understanding of the process. Hell, there has already been passing mention of a condition I have myself. Turns out those extra rows of eyelashes should have been some gland in the eyelid. I like my eyelashes as they are but if that gland turns out to be useful in some way or other I will have been well and truly hoist by my own petard.
"False analogy. A reaction to a security guard towards someone that looks like a security risk is not comparable to hiring a person. You can't say to a muslim "we'll hire you, but deny you certain priviledges that non-muslim employees enjoy, because you're statistically a security risk"."
No, but you could take a bit longer over their security checks, follow a few more trails, than you would with a non-Muslim employee without that being unfair discrimination.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 04:57 am (UTC)Well, those are health things, and I'm not sure why it was brought up. Certainly, I wouldn't have thought anyone was justified in telling you want you can and can't do based on your eyelashes...
No, but you could take a bit longer over their security checks, follow a few more trails, than you would with a non-Muslim employee without that being unfair discrimination.
Only within what you're technically allowed to do for anyone, but are too lazy to do so most of the time.
You certainly can't say "if you're a muslim you have to fulfill these extra requirements".
no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 05:17 am (UTC)TBH I suspect a few people have told me I can do things based on my eyelashes, and if that's genetic discrimination I'm very much in favour of it...
"No, but you could take a bit longer over their security checks, follow a few more trails, than you would with a non-Muslim employee without that being unfair discrimination.
Only within what you're technically allowed to do for anyone, but are too lazy to do so most of the time.
You certainly can't say "if you're a muslim you have to fulfill these extra requirements"."
I think we're pretty much in agreement here. It is fair to use [religion, genetics] as a pointer, indicating which areas bear further investigation. It is not fair to use it as a default bar on employment/insurance.
The thing is, certain people would argue that even using [religion, genetics] as a pointer constituted discrimination. And I don't want laws framed that give those people any leeway.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 11:08 am (UTC)Go me!
no subject
Date: 2004-05-18 02:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 02:55 am (UTC)Hippy.
The problem with your insurance example, is it's about changing insurance costs subject to calculation of risk, but the point of insurance for the individual is to eliminate risk. If we were perfectly able to predict the occurrence of bad things, insurance would instantly be obsolete.
Black people and gay people have a lower life expectancy in the UK, so logically there should be a life insurance premium attached to being black or gay, just as there is a being-female discount.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 03:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 03:23 am (UTC)Also...strange observation whilst I was doing everyone's P11Ds today - all of our male consultants over 35 are married with dependents (and only 2 of the ones under 35 aren't married). None of our female consultants bar the most senior one are married at all. But I did read something about unmarried women having a much higher life expectancy than married women, but it being the reverse for men. Mariage just doesn' suit women, it would seem, whereas it is good for men. But who knows? It's just statistics after all...
no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 03:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 03:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-17 03:47 am (UTC)(although the first two solo albums were awful)