GENETICIZING DISABILITY - THE HUMAN GENOME PROJECT AND THE COMMODIFICATION OF SELF

This article explores the potential impact upon people with disability of some of the technological information being uncovered by the Human Genome Project. While the project has been promoted as promising posi tive benefits to society, its effect, in our present values climate, i s potentially damaging. While we can map impairment, we cannot, as yet , cure it. And, in a society which embraces values such as utilitarian ism and economic rationalism, we are choosing more and more to elimina te rather than care. We are seeing a conceptual transformation-the gen eticization of self-which has enormous implications for the lives of p eople with disability. The author argues that scientific endeavor, whi ch has been constructed as occurring within a culture of impartiality and empiricism, actually operates within an uncontested value base whi ch devalues disability. She concludes that the Human Genome Project ne eds to be reframed within a broadened ethical framework of inclusion.