A moral history of the evolution of a caste of workers.

Using a dialectic method of philosophic inquiry, the actual ethical, legal, and social situation associated with genetic testing of beryllium-exposed workers in Department of Energy nuclear weapons facilities for markers of chronic beryllium disease is described. The cultural evolution of a caste system in a similar situation, and its social and biological implications, among uranium miners in the Erz Gebirge of Central Europe and on the Colorado Plateau of the United States, marked by suicide and lung disease, including cancer, is also described. The historically persistent social disease resulting from these situations. The Masada Syndrome, named from an analogous situation in biblical times, is characterized. Cultural intervention, a necessary condition for the ethical progression of the Human Genome Project, is outlined.