If you're applying for a job at the University of Akron, you may have more to worry about than the old adage of publish or perish. Whether you want to work as a secretary or a tenured professor, a new university policy empowers the college to require job applicants to submit DNA. Laurie Massie, a spokesperson for the University of Akron, told CBS News that the board decided to include DNA testing in the policy because "there have been national discussions that indicate that in the future, reliance on fingerprinting will diminish and DNA for criminal identification will be the more prominent technology."
But Massie’s statement obscures the difference between a DNA sample and a fingerprint. Taking DNA is more intrusive, even if it is just done through a cheek swab. A recent criminal case, Friedman v. Boucher, 580 F.3d 847 (9th Cir. 2009), found that police exceeded their authority when they subjected an unwilling suspect to a cheek swab. Plus, DNA contains far more information than does the fingerprint. Testing an applicant’s DNA could provide information about whether the applicant, while healthy now, was likely to develop a costly-to-treat genetic disease. Even if the DNA was only used to see if an applicant’s DNA was in the federal DNA databank because he or she had committed a crime, adding employment searches to the investigative searches of the databank would result in even greater backlogs than currently exist.
Continue reading "CSI Meets PhD: Should Universities Require DNA Testing of Job Applicants?" »

Recent Comments