Insurers admit genetic discrimination

Genetic discrimination by insurers: the public perception.

NORMA DAVIS: Good morning. Our first speaker this morning is Dr. Paul Billings who is currently at the California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco.* He studied at Harvard, getting his M.D. and Ph.D degrees there and then went on to the University of Washington where he trained in internal medicine and medical genetics. Following that, he did a post-doctoral fellowship at David Farber Insti...

Genetic discrimination: the use of genetically based diagnostic and prognostic tests by employers and insurers.

Genetic discrimination is detrimental to public health programs, as well as to society generally. Advances in genetic testing and screening, accelerated and prompted by the Human Genome Initiative, increase society's ability to detect and monitor chromosomal differences. These technologies and their resulting genomic data will enhance medical science, but may also encourage discrimination. Alth...

Health Insurers Struggle to Manage Number, Cost of Genetic Tests.

said to have an allele labeled as *2, shown on the test report as CYP2C19*2. No one in the doctor’s office— including the doctor himself—knew the significance of the asterisk. “The doctor called me and said, ‘I got this interesting value. It was CYP2C19 squared,’” Laposata says. “And I said, ‘What do you mean, squared?’ The doctor thought it was a superscript and *2 meant it was squared. I said...

Genetic determinism or genetic discrimination?

"Admit medical".

Editorial "Admit medical" As the fog of uncertainty surrounding the purchaser/provider relationship in the restructured health service begins to clear, many doctors responsible for providing acute services find that darkness has already fallen. For those who are charged with managing acute medical admissions to hospital, difficult nights finding beds lie ahead. Hospital physicians and referring...