Pre-existing conditions  

I wonder if this story will get broader play. NBA commissioner David Stern is advocating genetic testing for players during rookie camp:

"Let's put it back in rookie camp. If you're thinking about drafting a player, you do blood [tests], you do X-rays, skeletal, you look for scars, for breaks, for weaknesses, for disease. I don't know what you would be looking for with DNAs, but given the size of the contract and the importance of the draft pick, I think that diagnostic testing that tells you whether you're making a good investment is not a bad idea."

He goes on to say that this information should be controlled by the player, but it's easy to see how not providing information like this could be damning if it starts to be the standard practice to submit it "voluntarily." My purely-a-guess is that only a very few athletes would actually submit to this kind of testing after a hard long look at the relative risks (on the one hand to their health and on the other to their careers). I don't say this to disaparage the value of life or athletes' respect for it, but rather to point out the vastness of the countervailing incentives in this instance.

As far as "the size of the contract and the importance of the draft pick," it seems pretty obvious that there's a slippery slope here for DNA testing -- where do we draw the line between work that requires you to be healthy and work that doesn't? How big does that contract have to be, and how important to whom? Ultimately this is a technological exploit for employers that annihilates the notions of equal opportunity and equal protection.