Over on Google+, Mary Mangan left this comment:

“Mary ManganJul 11, 2012 – Public

Chris Gunter has an upbeat piece on personal genomics at Soapbox Science.

“I was trying to decide how much life insurance to buy before I crossed that cost milestone.”

Yeah, the information is incredibly fascinating. And could have benefits…. But the regulatory environment is not protecting people at this time. That test she took could have prevented her from getting life insurance. Richard Resnick’s excellent TEDx talk specifically showed his insurance application which demanded to know if you’d taken a consumer genetic test. If some unfortunate alleles had turned up, they could have turned her down.

It’s fine to talk about the benefits. But I don’t think it’s right to not mention that.

Resnick’s talk: http://blog.openhelix.eu/?p=9173”

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Mary makes a good point: self-purchased life insurance is not currently protected under the US law called GINA [see here for more info: http://www.dnapolicy.org/gina/gina.html#insurance15%5D, but is protected under some state’s laws. And in the talk, Dr. Resnick shows a form for life insurance where he has to disclose whether or not he’s had genetic testing, or risk being charged extra for the policy. Perhaps, when life insurance is no longer provided by my current employer, I will have to deal with the same issues.

This is definitely a problem which, in my opinion, needs to be addressed through further legislation here in the US.