Image: Harry Campbell
In Brief
- Genetic testing will expand quickly and soon, adding highly targeted data to people’s medical records. As those records go electronic, outsiders will find it increasingly easy to peruse an individual’s health information.
- Able to uncover private details, health and life insurers could deny coverage to someone with a complex medical condition, and employers could fire or refuse to hire the person to avoid burdening the company health plan.
- Existing laws offer weak protection at best; legislation is needed to give individuals more control over their own data, to limit unauthorized disclosures by others and to penalize wrongdoers.
More In This Article
In years gone by, if colon cancer ran in your family all you could do was wait and worry about whether you might get it, too. Today a genetic test can determine whether you have inherited a greater-than-average risk of the disease and so could benefit from preventive care. The more doctors know about your genes, the better able they are to prevent, treat or cure illnesses.
Excitement about such prospects surrounded the start of the Human Genome Project in 1990. But the enthusiasm was soon tempered by widespread concern about the need to protect the privacy of a person’s genetic information. Simple tests that could readily reveal an individual’s genetic endowment could also readily cause embarrassment or stigma. Furthermore, insurers could deny people health coverage or raise the premiums they have to pay. And employers seeing the results could deny people jobs or fire them. At the same time, scientists and public health officials recognized that the potential to improve health care based on genetic studies across large populations could never be achieved if legions of people refused to participate out of fear that the results could be misused.
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3 Comments
Add Commentwith the more we know the more frightening it becomes especially the fear of such power landing in the hands of evil.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problems associated with the misuse of private medical information is compounded dreadfully by the amount of errors in medical records! I have seen mine and the errors are not a matter of interpretation, but gross.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy is the Insurance industry and Corporations running America? And why aren't Americans speaking out?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd now patients won't be so willing to be honest with their doctors due to withholding of medical care decided by the Insurance Industry.
Since no one is getting together, seeing reality, thinking for yourself and protesting and voting out the idiots, boycotting en masse corporations that are exploiting its own citizens.