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  3. In 2010, Pamela Fink, an employee of a Connecticut energy company, made a new kind of discrimination claim: she charged that she

In 2010, Pamela Fink, an employee of a Connecticut energy company, made a new kind of discrimination claim: she charged that she

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问题     In 2010, Pamela Fink, an employee of a Connecticut energy company, made a new kind of discrimination claim: she charged that she had been fired because she carries genes that predispose her to cancer. Fink quickly became the public face for the cutting edge of civil rights: genetic discrimination.
    The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which was passed out of concern for just such cases in the wake of huge advances in genetics testing, took effect in late 2009. GIN A, as it is known, makes it illegal for employers to fire or refuse to hire workers based on their "genetic information" — including genetic tests and family history of disease. GINA doesn’t just apply to employers: health-insurance companies can be sued for using genetic information to set rates or even just for investigating people’s genes.
    The numbers of genetic-discrimination complaints will almost certainly increase greatly in coming years, for the reason that, as biological science advances, there is likely to be even more genetic information available about people. Even though this sort of medical information should remain private, employers and insurance companies will have strong financial incentives to get access to it—and to use it to avoid people who are most likely to get sick.
    When genetic-discrimination claims start showing up in the courts in significant numbers, they are likely to get a sympathetic hearing. There are two major reasons that so many people—even congressional Republicans who are highly skeptical of civil rights laws—like GINA. First, there is the kind of discrimination it is aimed at: penalizing people for strands of DNA and RNA that they inherited from their parents through no fault of their own. In general, our society has decided to protect people for qualities that are " immutable" —that is, something about them that is impossible or, at least, very difficult to change.
    So we make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, skin color and sex. On the other hand, we generally do not protect people who are not hired because they lack a high school diploma or because they wear a beard. Our response to those people is that if you want the job you should get more education or shave. Genes are a classic immutable characteristic: outside of some complicated medical procedures, we’re pretty much stuck with the genes we were born with.
    The second major reason genetic-discrimination laws are popular is that this is a kind of bias everyone feels they could be exposed to. None of us has perfect genes—and for the most part, we have no idea what is lurking in our DNA and RNA. Our genes are complex enough that we all have some negative information encoded in there—and none of us wants to lose a job or be denied insurance over it. When juries begin to hear these cases, they are far more likely to identify with the plaintiffs than with the companies that discriminate. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be plenty of companies looking to benefit from genetic information, but if they use it, they may well have to pay.
According to the passage, genetic discrimination differs from traditional types of discrimination such as racial discrimination or gender discrimination in that______.
选项 A、it is a discrimination that everyone is likely to be subjected to
B、it wins unprecedented sympathetic hearing in American court
C、it is a discrimination on the basis of the biological trait of a person
D、genetic discrimination is still prevalent while traditional discriminations have been largely eliminated
答案A
解析 这一题不能从文中直接找到答案。文中只提到了基因歧视和其他类型歧视的共同点，那就是都是基于人们无法改变的一些特征而产生的歧视。而不同点需要大家阅读完整篇文章后加以判断。文章在最后一段中提到，基因歧视之所以在美国受到如此关注，是因为这是一种人人都有可能碰到的歧视，因为没有人的基因是完美无缺的。这一点是《反基因歧视法》在美国受到大多数人欢迎的原因。而传统意义上的歧视，例如种族歧视等都只是针对少部分人。因此，[A]选项是正确答案。[B]选项错误，文中只提到法官们在审理基因歧视案件的时候，会给予原告一定的同情分，但原文并没有提到美国法庭对于种族歧视或者性别歧视等歧视案件的态度，因此我们无从比较。[C]选项错误，基因歧视确实是由于人的生理特征而产生的偏见，但是同样的，种族歧视或者女性歧视也和人的生理特征有一定的联系，这是它们的共同点，而不是不同点。[D]选项基因歧视很普遍，而传统的歧视被消除的说法没有根据。
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