Abstract
Poorly understood, linked in complex ways to ideas about race and European identity, and the focus today of an ethically vexed and rapidly expanding testing industry, cystic fibrosis is a relatively common life-threatening genetic disorder in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union. Many genetic diseases are invisible to the general public, but CF is a high-profile genetic disease, often characterized as a “white” disease though it occurs in many populations. Over the last five years it has become the focus of genetic screening programs of many kinds, but especially for newborns, all over the world. CF is also a scientifically interesting genetic disease. By the simple if imperfect ..