Title: Genetic Testing in the Workplace Author: Albrando Lorenzo Lucino Jr, Ph.D-CIn 2008, then-President George W. Bush signed into law the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. This law was enacted as a measure to prevent health insurance organizations to use patients’ genetic background and genetic information as the basis for decision making in either the approval or disapproval of patient health coverage. The law specifically provides protection from health organizations, particularly health insurance providers from denying coverage for Americans who are otherwise healthy, but may have a family history of certain health risks such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, certain types of cancers, cardiac deficits and even endocrinal disorders (Berks, 2008; Varner, 2011). The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act also makes special clauses that protect applicants and employees from decisions that employers make based on an employee’s genetic background and testing results (Varner, 2011).
Prior to the 2008 Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act that was signed into law by President George W. Bush, there were laws that addressed the issues of genetic information being used in an unprofessional and unethical manner by employers as well as health insurance agencies. Some of these laws included the 1995 Genetic Privacy and Nondiscrimination Act, the 1996 Genetic Fairness Act, the 1995 Genetic Information Nondiscrimination in Health Insurance Act and the 1996 Genetic Confidentiality and Nondiscrimination Act (Brandt-Rauf, Brandt-Rauf, Gershon, Yongliang and Brandt-Rauf, 2011). The reasons why these laws and regulations were passed was due to a historical precedent where in which employers utilized health information to shape their decisions in hiring and firing workers. In an article written by Brand-Rauf et al (2011), the implementation of new genetic testing at work may better the health and safety of workers, but may also raise some potent social , legal and ethical issues that may affect not only employees but also the employers. Brandt-Rauf et al (2011) also mentioned that prejudice against individuals with certain health risks has been documented early in the 20th century. There was a geneticist by the name of J.B.S Haldane, who in 1938, concocted an idea to bar individuals who had congenital predisposition to potters’ bronchitis from entering the pottery industry. By doing so, this would prevent cases of individuals developing potters’ bronchitis and thus prevent the necessity of giving severance pay for workers who developed such a terminal disease. It should be noted that during the 1950s when technology was developed to analyze enzymatic genetic variants to test for hemolytic reaction in screen for particular diseases was it being used in the work place. As a result of this, individuals with health disorders in the testing or showed a family history were being rejected from positions whilst those with no history were chosen (Brandt-Rauf et al, 2011). This is why it is important to understand why these laws were enacted, as a means to protect workers and also to protect employers from committing abuses.
Genetic testing and its prevalence in the work place has been an issue of concern. The past several years have observed many attempts to seen the scope and depth of genetics being used in industry (Andrews and Zuiker, 2003). In a survey that was conducted in 1982 by the Congressional Office of Technological Assessment, out of the 366 companies that responded to a survey, only 5% of them admitted to using genetic testing as the basis to identify susceptibility of employees as well as using said information for hiring or firing of said employees. Since then, however, there has been a rapid increase in the prevalence of genetic testing in work places. There was a survey that was conducted in 199 and about 1,054 companies responded, of which about 16.7% of them admitted to using genetic testing procedures to shape their decisions on employee retention and layoffs (Brandt-Rauf et al, 2011). One can observe that these surveys function as a window to the greater body that is the American industry and the millions of Americans who are employed by said companies. The passing of the 2008 Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act answers these issues by making it illegal for employers to use genetic testing results on employees for key decision making.
One has to understand the psychological effects of the use of genetic testing results and revealing this not only to aforementioned operational managers within that said organization, but also to the employee being tested. This was addressed in an article written by Andersson, Juth, Petersen, Graff and Edberg (2013), which aimed to describe the many experiences that employees have during presymptomatic gene testing for the nefarious genetic disease known as Huntington ’s disease. Huntington’s disease, otherwise known as Huntington’s chorea, is a neurodegenerative disorder with onset usually taking course in the third of fourth decade of life. This disease is characterized by chorea and dementia; pathologically, there is bilateral marked atrophy of the putamen and the head of the caudate nuclease. Autosomal dominant inheritance with complete penetrance, caused by mutation associated with trinucleotide repeat expansion in the Huntington gene, which is located on chromosome 4p (Petersen et al, 2013). The results of the study showed that there was a fusion of ethical and medical aspects in undergoing genetic testing for Huntington’s disease for employees.
Genetic testing and the revelation of results gave rise to anxiety for employees, particularly significant feelings of despair and loss of hope. Despite the planning benefits of presymptomatic testing, employers have to understand the psychological and ethical effects of taking genetic testing and revealing said testing to employees. One also has to understand the effects such revelation has on employers (Huys, Berthels, Matthijs and Overwalle, 2009). Upon knowing that a loyal worker has been diagnosed positive for Huntington’s disease , and knowing the neurodegenerative effects this disease will have on the employee, this would necessitate the company’s decision to layoff said employee or enact policy that might induce the employee to resign, particularly decrease said employee’s hours (Petersen et al, 2013).
Employees are selected through a selective process, many having to go through batteries, which roots out those who are less credible for those who have certain characteristics that might work within a working environment. As a human resource specialist, one has to take into consideration the concept of base rate, which reflects the percentage of current employees who are successful on the job. In part, this percentage reflects the quality of the previous selection battery and provides a baseline against which the new selection battery can be compared (Levy, 2013). Fortunately for us we have , through the auspices of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the Principles for the Validation and Use of Personnel Selection Procedures. This guide serves as a technical guide for those who work in the field of employee selection, with the caveat that the principles were not intended to be perceived as legal guidelines (Levy, 2013). As such, one has to understand that one cannot use genetic testing as a means to select candidates because that is a violation of ethical policy, as well as is contrary to proper hiring and selection protocol as mentioned by Levy (2013).
It will be evident that, as mentioned earlier in this paper, that ethical considerations will be manifested in the analysis of genetic testing in the workplace. In the attempt of the conception of certain health professionals in regards to the use of genetic testing, Powell-Young and Spruill (2013) noted that African-American nurses voiced concerns that there would be a possibility of discriminative genetic information use and that the minority participation of said genetic testing should be endorsed so as to provide a greater understanding of differences in health disease manifestation and predisposition. The relevance of the clinical research shows that genetic testing will provide heightened opportunity to better the delivery of health care for disadvantaged minority groups; at the same time the opinion of African-American nurses believe that information could be used by health organizations to focus health care on certain groups of people that don’t have a high proclivity for health disorders, particularly cardiac deficits (Powell-Young and Spruill, 2013). This is interesting to note because African-American populations have a high risk for diabetes mellitus, hypertension and cardiac-related pathologies such as myocardial infaction and congestive heart failure as compared to other ethnic groups (Berk, 2008).
Any health information that is gained through genetic testing should be confidential and should not be used to layoff an individual. On contrary, health information gathered through genetic testing should be utilized to provide much needed internal health specialists to be made readily available for employees should they need health counseling. In addition, as a health specialist working in the human resources department of a large hospital setting, I would be compelled to encourage the employer to provide medical leave for the employee to deal with this medical problem. President Clinton promulgated the Family and Medical Leave Act back in 1993 (Levy, 2013). This law allowed eligible employees to take job-protected, unpaid leave for up to 12 weeks owing to family-related issues such as birth of a child, the serious health condition of a family member, or one’s own serious health condition. These health conditions include illness, injury, impairment, or physical and mental conditions (Levy, 2013). By doing this, we foster a work environment that invests on the employees. By doing this, we increase confidence on the employees that the organization cares for them, and thus by doing so can increase worker to worker interoperability, satisfaction and efficiency.
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