Following the letters of the law can sometimes lead to seemingly absurd situations. A university in Germany elects a new rector. Two months later the science ministry rejects her appointment, because she had previously cancer, and the possibility of a recurrence is too high for the government to accept. No, she doesn’t have cancer at present, but the mere possibility seemed enough to prevent her from taking her office.
Sounds incredible? Well, that’s exactly what happened to Renate Lieckfeldt (link in German), who got elected rector of the University of Leipzig, a college in the German state of Saxony end of last January.
The dilemma is that Lieckfeldt is a professor at a college in a different German State. And the law is that she has to become a civil servant of Saxony to assume her new position. In Germany, being a civil servant means that you have sponsored access to expensive medical healthcare, typically with much better privileges than those who are on general healthcare. All the way into retirement! And what at least I wasn’t aware is that apparently if you are in danger of costing the state a lot of money because of a medical condition it can mean you are denied becoming a civil servant. And that’s exactly what is the situation now.
Of course, this law isn’t only for university rectors, it holds for every civil servant there. Therefore, my feeling is that the state wants to avoid a costly precedent. So that’s what they follow the law without exception, even though I am sure there would be room for maneuver.
Still, looking beyond Lieckfeldt, what I find outraging here is that a government takes decisions on hypothetical medical conditions. Where would you stop this? Would you stop employing overweight people for the danger of them becoming diabetic? What if you have a gene that has you predisposed for certain diseases? Genetic profiling is widely criticized particularly in Germany. Yet, taking such a decision based on potential health implications such as that following prior cancer is little different in its consequences.
Governments have to lead by example. There are statistical possibilities lurking in all our genes. Stigmatizing the healthy for past and possible future diseases therefore seems just plainly wrong to me. The State of Saxony in my eyes would be wise to chose the first choice for the job – the already elected candidate.
Welcome to my personal blog, where I write about the latest exciting developments in the natural sciences and bring my own perspective to scientific trends in these areas.
June 1, 2011 at 20:18
This situation resembles the facts of a USA Supreme Court case from 2002, entitled Chevron v Echazabal. Because the case had such a bad result, the US Congress in 2008 changed the federal disabilty law. I mention that first because perhaps the German law should change too. In Chevron, a worker was in good health but had a high risk for bladder cancer due to a long history of exposure to workplace toxins. The US Supreme Court decided (but was reversed by US Congress) that the worker had too high a risk of future illness to be employed at the job, despite the Ameicans With Disabilities Act (ADA)requirements favoring employment of people with disabilities, and providing opportunities to people who have subclinical illness that is “not manifest”