Lewis Maltby began his career as a corporate attorney; later he managed an engineering company. His experiences with business and law combined with his personal interest in social policy led him to volunteer time with the ACLU. This led to his forming a nonprofit organization focused on the rights of employees. In a speech he gave in 2000,28 Maltby warned:
The knowledge we gain from the genetic revolution chips away at our very sense of community. Our willingness to think of ourselves as members of a community and to act as such has two deep roots. The first is that we are inherently social animals. Nature has wired us that way. The second is people have generally been better off as members of a community.
But our sense of community is unraveling before our eyes. Millions of upper middle class parents have abandoned the public schools. This phenomenon is not limited to urban areas where the public schools leave much to be desired. Even in affiuent com- munities, with excellent public schools, many middle class families send their children to private schools. We don't even live in the same towns anymore. When I grew up, there was a rich side of town and a poor side of town. But at least it was the same town and people freely crossed from one side of the tracks to another. But today we see the rise of gated communities. These private towns not only have their own police and other municipal services, but you can't even enter these new towns unless the security guard at the gate lets you in.
Our growing ability to peer into the medical future only makes things worse. When we don't know who among us will be struck by calamity, it makes sense to stick to- gether and take care of each other. But when we know that the curses of Job are likely to befall someone else rather than ourselves, our incentive to be a community diminishes. All of a sudden, we're not in the same boat anymore. The genetic revolution did not create this sea change. Widespread accumulation of wealth and growing economic inequality are the primary causes. But predictive genetics adds fuel to the fire.
The greatest challenge we face entering a new century may be how to maintain our sense of community as the economic foundation of community disappears.
How does Maltby link the disintegration of community and the genetic testing phenomenon?