About the Cover
Cover. In coming years, the influence of genetic research and clinical applications on public health will be substantial. Bioethicists and human rights scholars are grappling with the concerns genetic technology raises about issues ranging from privacy to bioengineering to the very concepts of bodily integrity and self-hood. As Giselle Corbie-Smith observes in her article concerning the impact of genetic research on identity (pp1971-1978), "the advancement of genetic variation research . . . may affect the ways in which individuals and groups organize socially, politically, and economically." The cover image documents a genetic research project underway in India. Partha P. Majumder of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, West Bengal, is using the DNA in blood samples taken from 30 different ethnic groups to build a model for the peopling of the subcontinent. His data suggest that the first populations arrived from Africa, then rapidly expanded and diversified. Research initiatives such as this one are likely to shift our definitions of race and ethnicity, reshaping conceptions of our common humanity and bringing into question the characteristics by which we organize the differences that distinguish us. Will genetic information provide a new set of normative characteristics for the production of prejudice and discrimination, or will its assertions of a common genetic origin diminish the social value of difference among humans?
Cover concept by Aleisha Kropf, Robert Sember, and Mary Northridge. Photograph by Karen Kasmauski/Corbis.
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Copyright © 2006 by the American Public Health Association
