I would even go as far as saying that one day we should have a "heath risk score," much like our centralized and standardized credit scores. Combining individuals' past physical health, mental health, and behavior history with the predictive ability of DNA screening, such a number (or set of numbers) would be most valuable in many of the facets of life in which we have to evaluate and forecast how a person will perform.

Beyond that, I can only hope that DNA screening technology and science can come close to crystallizing some form of a score on intelligence, diligence, laziness, and the many other personality traits which, today, we really just guess at (and, more often than not, guess wrong). The roadblocks to such a thing are not just technological. Trepidation from our culture's innate Orwellian fantasies will certainly stand in the way.

What, exactly, is the root of Orwellian fears when it comes to using more advanced science in our decision making process? The fear is a lack of randomness. The ugly truth of equality is that people tend to only be adamant about fairness when there is a better chance than not that it will benefit them. Now, when it doesn't benefit them, people do not necessarily naturally turn to purposeful unfairness. Rather, they turn to the security of randomness.

Nearly every popular belief on how we should decide who should be employed and who should not hedges more toward randomness than fair and accurate inequity. Individuals desire ever more less-than-perfect systems for deciding things such as job hiring, because if it turns out that the individual is actually not qualified (i.e. less intelligent, less healthy, and so on)- they'd still get the same shot. Never mind, of course, in the zero-sum game of economics, someone more qualified gets less of a deserved shot at the same job.

The somewhat bizarre tribulations of a multi-million dollar basketball player aside, the case of Eddy Curry and the Chicago Bulls should serve as a sign that, indeed, we are all slowly entering a Brave New World. However, when we look at the entirety of the picture- especially the relative randomness and guesswork in which we decide who among us is fit or unfit for certain jobs- maybe we're embarking on a welcome new world. One where science and technology help us achieve the true equality between people that we could never do alone.

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DNA Screening and the Fear of Equality in the Job Market