Can your vaccine status lead to genetic discrimination?
What action can we take to ensure that does not happen? Find out this Thursday
I am passionate about highlighting the work of citizen advocates who don’t need titles to make a difference in our world. Andre Givogue is one of them:
Under the Canadian Human Rights Act, genetic characteristics are a protected ground,” he explained. “But the law doesn’t clearly define what that means. That lack of clarity allows for misinterpretation and misuse, which is exactly what happened in my case.”
Givogue’s legal argument centers on the Genetic Non-Discrimination Act (GNA), passed in 2017, and its amendments to the Canadian Human Rights Act. While the GNA explicitly prohibits genetic discrimination, its scope is limited to health-related genetic tests, such as those used to detect predispositions to diseases like Parkinson’s or cancer.
Givogue argues that the definition of “genetic characteristics” should be broader, encompassing situations where genetic or medical information is inferred indirectly, such as through vaccination status.
Supporting his argument is the Supreme Court’s obiter dicta in the Reference re Genetic Non-Discrimination Act case. The court acknowledged that genetic information protections should not be limited to health-based genetic tests but should include genetic data obtained by other means.
“By protecting ‘genetic characteristics’ rather than information disclosed by genetic tests, the amendments to the CHRA include genetic information obtained through other means,” Givogue quote.
Join the Law and Activism Committee at World Council for Health this Thursday 23 January at 1pm GMT/UTC: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82927842717
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