Israel Matzav

Measuring racial purity

A Hungarian genetics company is in trouble after certifying that a far right politician is free of Jewish and Roma genes.

Hungary’s Medical Research Council (ETT), which advises the government on health policy, has asked public prosecutors to investigate a genetic-diagnostic company that certified that a member of parliament did not have Roma or Jewish heritage.

The MP in question is a member of the far-right Jobbik party, which won 17% of the votes in the general election of April 2010. He apparently requested the certificate from the firm Nagy Gén Diagnostic and Research, which rents office space at the prestigious Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. The company produced the document in September 2010, a few weeks before local elections.

The certificate — with the MP’s name blacked out — emerged on the web last month and was seized on by the Hungarian media. One of Nagy Gén’s financial partners, Tibor Benedek — a three-time Olympic water-polo gold medallist and a member of a prominent Jewish family — immediately pulled out of the company.

The ETT’s secretary, József Mandl, chair of medical chemistry at the Semmelweis University in Budapest, says that the certificate is “professionally wrong, ethically unacceptable — and illegal”. The council discussed the issue on 7 June and concluded that the genetic test violates the 2008 Law on Genetics, which allows such testing only for health purposes.

A trend of the future? I can see lots of Muslims (many of whom, at least in this part of the world, marry close relatives) taking advantage of this kind of certificate. And how many of these tests were developed by Jews? Hmmm.

Labels: high tech

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:47 PM