Pete Domenici: “I rise today to return a momentous issue to the forefront. This issue is genetics confidentiality and nondiscrimination.…”

“I rise today to return a momentous issue to the forefront. This issue is genetics confidentiality and nondiscrimination. I am pleased to report that the human genome project is proceeding rapidly to map and sequence the entire complement of human genes. These genes are coded in over 3 billion molecular building blocks of DNA. Now, most people--and I must say most Members of the Congress--are not necessarily aware of the fact that since 1986, our Government has been involved in an annual program which has reached the size of about $138 to $140 million a year, which is divided one-third in the Department of Energy and two-thirds in the National Institutes of Health. That program spends that money by permitting various major American institutions to proceed to map certain chromosomes which are yielding fantastic information regarding diseases of the human species. One might quickly recognize that if that is going on, it probably is also going on in the area of animals and in the area of agricultural products. And, yes, although the genome project is human, because of its tremendous success it is going on in the other areas also. So, in a very real sense, believe it or not, while all the discussion of late is about conventional health care proposals, it is entirely possible, in fact I believe probable, that within 25 to 40 years the entire delivery of health care will be built around genetics rather than what we are doing today.”