This is awfull. Of course employers want to get excused to pay to sick employees, but to see it is legal!!! Gene testing will be so perfect and cheap within a few years that no soldier will be paid after an injury. Almost everyone has some gene's that are potentially dangerous, in the right setting. And how dangerous does the 'illness' have to be. If it saves on money being prone to get migraines or the flu will be reason enough to kick you out after 7,5 years of duty.
Who is going to want to serve in the military if we treat the soldiers and vets like this?
Destroy the National Guard by sending them to Iraq like the regular Army
Destroy the volunteer army by stop loss, calling up the individual ready reserve, dumping soldiers with genetic variations
Can't pass a draft through Congress
What will we end up with? 20 years of service in the army like Peter the Great? History professor described it as (those Russian words for goodbye (son))
In order for statistically reliable correlations to be made between genetic sequence variations and disease susceptibilities and drug effects, thousands of people will have to be willing to have their DNA sequenced and be willing to give details about their health histories. One could go in one of two directions here. A) try to keep the information private--by secure data storage, anonymizing the samples (that is, stripping out personal identifiers); or B) change the system such that there would not be such a need to keep the information private.
I have mixed feelings about personalized medicine. It's a complicated set of issues.
I have mixed feelings too. One side is, you don't get treatments that won't work, the other side could be they won't treat you at all, because its not 'worth the effort' finding a medication for you in your total condition.
I like the medical possibilities. But I distrust the economical, statistical, political judgments on who to treat and who not.
Also I don't really like the idea of being closely monitored to much. I like it if something serious and life treathening is happening. But I don't like the database to be opened all the time, for every cough and every negative thought.