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An Ethical Analysis of the Use of Genetic Screening in the Commercial Airline Industry Team Members: Emily Lapp, Tyson Meadors, Amy Hunt, Nicole Ruiz and Joe Brunsman

I. Background Commercial pilots currently undergo rigorous medical testing and certification procedures to received authorization to fly commercial jetliners. Medical standards have been in place since the creation of the Federal Aviation Administration in 1958 that provide for the safe operation of commercial aircraft by ensuring that all commercial pilots are in optimal health so as not to endanger the lives of passengers and crew. Safety in the airline industry is a key concern and it is clear that numerous regulations currently exist in order to ensure that commercial airlines provide a safe operational environment for their employees and customers. Although genetic screening is not currently utilized in the airline industry, it is a rapidly emerging technology that is becoming increasingly utilized by both the public and private sectors. When faced with new medical technologies of the 21st century, airlines must decide whether they will take immediate advantage of these innovative technologies or disregard possible benefits due to perceived ethical and financial restraints.

II. Ethical responsibilities, obligations, and agency

A commercial airline faces many responsibilities. Due to the nature of the airline industry, safety is an obligation that weighs more heavily on airline companies than on companies in other industries. Fatal plane crashes are guaranteed headline news in all global markets, regardless of the exceptional rarity of crashes and the general high level of airline safety. The industry lull caused by the fear of flying that developed in the weeks following 9/11 illustrates the potential consequences of distrust in an airline’s ability to deliver its passengers to their destinations in a safe manner. Safety and the maintenance of a perception of safety is one of the most critical responsibilities of an airline company and its day to day operations.

Another obligation that airlines must weight heavily in all decision making is the well-being of their employees. Airline employees are just as vulnerable to safety concerns as the passengers, if not more so. The general strenuousness of airline operations, from ground logistics, air traffic control, to the operation of the airplane by pilots and crew members means that safety risks abound. Beyond the simple material safety concerns, human factors, including pilot error, account for a large proportion of airline accidents, many of which lead to fatalities and serious physical injury to passengers. Thus, an airline company incurs an obligation to minimize the risk posed to its employees by enacting policies that limit the likelihood of an error due to controllable factors that affect performance.

Additionally, an airline faces obligations to protect any sensitive information it collects from its employees. Like any major employer, the airline industry has an obligation to safeguard employee medical history records. The right to privacy is one that is generally accepted by most Western-based corporations and should always be made a corporate priority in order to sustain tenable relations with employees. Naval Academy 2

An airline, like all private companies, also incurs a final obligation to its corporate shareholders. A private airline should be profitable. Milton Friedman outlines this obligation succinctly in “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits,” an influential essay published in 1970 to supplement his book Capitalism and Freedom. He writes, “…[T]here is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.” Friedman argues that there are other mechanisms, such as government imposed legal protections and the obligation of both employees and consumers to act in accordance with their own moral sensibilities that limit the ways a company can act in order to pursue profit. Thus, an airline, like all businesses, has an obligation to enact policies that maximize profits, but stays within the moral and legal framework demanded by external forces.

In addition to the airline itself, the moral agency of two other groups must also be considered— airline pilots and customers. Though we can assume that each individual pilot and customer has individual moral concerns that govern their bilateral interactions with the airline company, it is more useful to consider these two moral agents as collective groups. This is intuitive and consistent with industry organization. Airline pilots, after all, have their own union, the Airline Pilots Association (ALPA), and virtually all companies enact policies that maximize their appeal to the largest possible number of customers as a matter of economic advantage.

In this study, we are primarily concerned with the actions of the airline in relation to both the pilots and customers. We believe that for any proposed policy to be ethically sound, it must take into account the needs and concerns of each of these three groups, and be weighed accordingly.

III. Analysis

Now we can consider our proposal, which is to use genetic screening as a way to further improve overall airline safety by identifying individuals who have a genetic disposition towards certain adverse reactions to stresses. Particularly, we are interested in those dispositions that would manifest within the airline operating environment. We are most concerned with the performance of pilots in the cockpit, since the most common cause of accidents within the airline industry is pilot error.1

The balance of obligations to the various moral agents can best be analyzed by determining the priority of each obligation and the possible consequences of choosing to include or overlook a particular nuance of this case. Airlines have a responsibility have both the safety obligations discussed earlier and the obligation to protect and uphold their pilots’ right to privacy. To address this concern, we believe airlines must have prior consent from their pilots in order to conduct any sort of genetic screening. Legal necessity aside, it is a colossal violation of personal autonomy to perform genetically invasive tests without that individual’s permission. This permission should be attained prior to employment, and should be a public part of every employment contract, such that every pilot understands the airline’s ability to collect genetic information from them.

1 http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm Naval Academy 3

Our general emphasis on personal autonomy is reflected in current medical privacy laws and regulations. An acceptable policy would treat genetic information as an extension of medical information already collected by the airline in routine medical screenings required to be a commercial airline pilot. Even if it was decided that the airline’s policy would outline a prohibition of genetic testing, it would be important to reaffirm the airline’s commitment to medical privacy. However, by understanding genetic testing as simply a more precise extension of medical data, a specific new policy formulation on genetic privacy issues would not be necessary if the company decides to pursue genetic testing. Simply stating that genetic testing results fall under the same category as current medical information requires merely the currently accepted level of privacy for the individual pilots involved. Any acceptable policy towards medical testing, to include genetic screening, must address the responsibility of the company to protect any test results from being distributed to those who have no right to such information. Using the Policy Guidance on Executive Order 13145 as a guideline2, a genetic screening policy must ensure it requires the storage of genetic information in confidential medical files rather than general personnel files. Additionally, the confidentiality of any genetic test results must be assured.

Genetic screening should be approached with the intent of helping people rather than as an invasion of privacy or overt discriminatory measure. For example, if genetic screening prevented the placement of a pilot not suited for night flying in the night time sky, and as a result a fatal crash was avoided, the many lives saved could very well justify the increased query into the pilot’s personal genetic composition. Any policy for genetic testing must operate with the overarching intention of increasing safety and consequently, saving human lives. This upholds the utilitarian-based ethical obligation of the airline to provide a safe traveling environment for both their customers and crewmembers.

An airline—or any company for that matter—must address the potential that exists for discrimination based upon the results of genetic screening. Those skeptical of the genetic screening of job applicants claim that if genetic screening is done during the application phase, those such as pilots who have less than exemplar genes will be overlooked in favor of those with more ‘desirable’ genes. Perhaps an otherwise talented and experienced pilot will be cast off in favor of a lesser experienced pilot who has a more desirable genetic makeup. These concerns are certainly valid and any policy on genetic testing must clearly and publicly outline what role, if any, genetic testing will play in the hiring process.

The policy we propose is one that does not exclusively use genetic screening in the hiring process, but rather, allows for genetic screening to be used in job placement decisions. By placing individual pilots in jobs most suited to their medical health and by keeping pilots out of situations that they are ill-suited for increases efficiency and maximizes the talents of each pilot. Thus genetic screening would be used as an augmentation of current medical testing, not as an additional discriminatory characteristic. Furthermore, the identification of a potentially limiting genetic disposition should not be the sole criteria for corporate employment policy. The mere presence of genetic disposition does not necessarily mean that the disposition is revealed in an

2 “Policy Guidance on Executive Order 13145: To Prohibit Discrimination in Federal Employment Based on Genetic Information” explains the definitions, prohibitions and exceptions of Executive Order 13145 signed by President Clinton on February 8, 2000. It prohibits discrimination on the basis of protected genetic information within the Executive branch of the government. Naval Academy 4 individual’s health. As such, genetic screening should be followed up by battery tests, which check for the realized presence of dispositions in the employee.

Our policy proposal is not drastic in regards to existing moral or legal principles. Rather, it should be viewed as an extension of current policies that already allow for medical testing in pilots for safety reasons. Genetic screening simply allows for a more directed, scientific approach to existing policies to ensure that pilot health not a cause in airline accidents.

IV. Addressing Possible Objections

It would be wrong to assume that our proposal would not encounter resistance from the other moral agents involved. This is particularly so concerning ALPA, which historically resists— often vehemently—the introduction of any new medical screening requirements for airline pilots.

To address this concern, we contacted ALPA and discussed with them what their concerns would be if such a policy was introduced either by a private airline or—as many safety regulations are —by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). A representative3 of ALPA confirmed our prediction that the initial reaction to any suggestion of higher medical standards would, “certainly be resisted.” Furthermore, he noted that since 2001, the airlines have been “racing to the bottom, minimum of medical standards because of money issues” and the general difficulty of finding pilots in a very competitive market.

A further concern of ALPA is far more general: As a whole, the pilot community believes they often unnecessarily carry the brunt of the blame for airline disasters. ALPA explained that, in their opinion, the airlines and FAA have been far to slow to enact reforms in areas such as flight scheduling. By choosing not to enact reforms, there remain a number of unnecessary risks to both airline safety and pilot heath. This general frustration felt towards both airline executives and the FAA must be accounted for in any morally responsible policy introducing genetic screening.

Our policy recommendation, therefore, has an added nuance that—as suggested by ALPA representatives in other situations—will help mitigate any resistance by the airline pilots to the introduction of a genetic screening policy. Namely, we propose that genetic screening be performed not only on pilot candidates but also middle to upper-level airline executives. This egalitarian proposal is unlikely to have any adverse effect on the executives themselves, whose list of potentially disqualifying genetic dispositions for their particular operating roles will certainly be quite limited. Yet, the mere presence of this aspect of our policy helps to neutralize a persistent and ostensibly moral objection that ALPA has historically used to make it difficult to enact medically related safety policies.

V. Conclusion

It is our sincere belief that a genetic screening policy proposal with the stipulations we have outlined above would not only be beneficial for the airline, but also for the pilots and the airline’s customers. Policies that further airline safety, provided that they are not financially prohibitive (and thus ethically null according to the arguments set forth by Friedman), are ethically

3 Dr. Donald Hudson, of the aeromedical policy office of the Airline Pilots Association. Naval Academy 5 desirable. In the case of the airline industry, this is even more important because we can assume that any accident, fatal or otherwise, involving a commercial airliner has the potential for adverse reactions from both potential customers and pilots. Customers will not fly on an airline they do not believe to be safe. Safety, therefore, has a direct impact on an airline company’s financial bottom line as well as its moral bottom line. We believe our policy will assist the airline in both staying airborne and in the black.