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Since she passed her bar exam on July 25, 1978, the day the first test-tube baby was born, Lori B. Andrews has been a pioneer working at the juncture of medicine and law. By the time the National Law Journal named her as one of the hundred most influential lawyers in America, Andrews had become an internationally acclaimed authority on biotechnologies.
She regularly advises the institutions that are trying to come to terms with the consequences of the biotech revolution—the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, among others—and she chaired the Working Group on the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of the Human Genome Project. She recently served as a consultant to the science ministers of various countries on gene patents, embryonic stem cells, and DNA banking. Increasingly her counsel is sought by artists, who are taking the biotech toolkit from the laboratory to the studio.
Andrews's ability to translate scientific concepts into language understandable to ordinary people, her imaginative grasp of the potential consequences of biotechnologies, and her dry sense of humor make her a favorite of the popular media; she's appeared on The Oprah Show, Nightline, and many other programs. Distinguished professor of law at Chicago-Kent College of Law, director of the Institute for Science, Law, and Technology in Chicago, and senior scholar at the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago, Andrews is also the author of nine books, including most recently Body Bazaar: The Market for Human Tissue in the Biotechnology Age (Crown, 2001), written with Dorothy Nelkin, and Future Perfect: Confronting Decisions about Genetics (Columbia Univ. Press, 2001). In September, Agnieszka Tennant talked with her about the extraordinary promises and perils of biotechnology.
What compelled you to work on establishing legal limits to genetic technologies?
I've been very interested in the effect of medical technology on individuals since college. Scientists often get wrapped up in what a new technology can do in the abstract, without looking at the fact that technologies can change people's lives in a profound way—and sometimes not for the better. So I've been very interested in putting a human face on technology and seeing ways in which even some things with a potentially beneficial medical impact can cause social and psychological problems for people.
What makes you cautious about the multifaceted salvation that genetics is said to offer?
For many people genetic tests create more problems than benefits because of a therapeutic gap. Many of the diseases that can be diagnosed through genetic testing cannot be successfully treated at this time. That has enormous implications: Health-care insurers might refuse to grant insurance to people because their genes predict that they're at a higher likelihood of getting cancer. Or an employer may decide to not give a job to persons with children who might use more health insurance because of their genetic makeup.
Increasingly, people are being judged based on their genes rather than on their abilities. In what for me was a very traumatic case, a South Carolina court actually ordered genetic testing on a woman in a divorce case at the request of her ex-husband. The ex-husband wanted to see if she had a genetic mutation that would make her die at an earlier age, perhaps around age 50. If this case were to set a precedent, genetic testing could become routine in custody battles; a child might end up with the parent who has the predicted longest life span rather than the better parent. You can see how in the future, fundamental parts of our lives might erroneously be governed by genetics.
