p2pnet.net OT News:- Germany is considering a law to “regulate limited genetic testing” for employees, says Deutches Welle.

“Advocates say the bill, which is still in discussion, clearly regulates how far employers are allowed to go in determining how genetically fit someone is for a job,” says the report, going on:

“In jobs such as construction or public transportation, the law would allow for genetic testing for symptoms of color blindness among other things, according to a report in the newsmagazine Der Spiegel.

Heinz Putzhammer, a representative of the Federation of German Trade Unions who worked on an early draft of the bill, is quoted as saying, “It sets the conditions for the type of tests that can be conducted. I think we’re on the right track because the limiting of genetic tests is in any case necessary in order to protect the person or the private sphere.”

However, that’s just a few short steps from tests that would help employers determine whether or not to hire someone based on their chance of developing a genetic disease, says Sue Mayer, director of the UK organization GeneWatch.

Many countries have taken the step of outlawing access to genetic tests for employers and insurers outright. Beginning with France and Norway in 1994, Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands and Austria have passed laws that either severely limit or outright forbid the use of a person’s genetic information for anything other than medical or scientific purposes, states Deutches Welle.

Parliamentarian Hubert Hüppe,deputy chair of the Ethics and Law in Modern Medicine commission in the German Bundestag, said the results of genetic tests, no matter what type, “belong in no one’s hands but the person tested,” it adds.

The article doesn’t say whether or not the testing, even if it were passed, would be limited solely to medical or scientific purposes.

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See:-

genetic testing – Are You (Genetically) Up to the Job?, Deutches Welle, October 25, 2004

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