DNA ANALYSIS AND INSURANCE
People Should be Allowed to keep DNA Private from Insurance Companies
DNA analysis is on the rise in popularity and more people are beginning to use it to find their genetic background. During the last 4 months of 2017, 23&Me has helped 2 million people find their ancestry and has collected 4,000 liters of spit (Genetic testing threatens the insurance industry, 2017). In 2017, direct-to-consumer testing doubled, and now the number of people that have taken these tests has exceeded 12 million (Regalado, 2018).
However, with genetic testing, there comes a drawback.
Life insurance companies can now look for genetic diseases that a person has or could have and alienate those with them. Yes, you heard right: life insurance.
According to CBS, in their interview with Jaime Court of the group Consumer Watchdog, he says that life insurance companies have the right to look at your genetic test, and if you decline, they have the right to terminate their policy. Even more concerning, is the fact that laws are ever changing, and it is unpredictable if it will become legal to hold your genes against you in the future (Taking An Ancestry Test Could Make It Harder To Buy Life Insurance, 2018).
For example, in Britain, having a gene that could lead to Huntington’s chorea must be disclosed to the insurer to cover £500,000, which costs around 662,000 USD.
Steps are being taken to protect this information. Passed in May 2009, a U.S. federal law called the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) was passed to protect people from this form of discrimination. It prohibits discrimination in health insurance and makes it illegal for health providers to use genetic information. However, GINA and other laws do not protect people in every circumstance, and it only protects health insurances, not life insurance.
The truth of the matter is, life insurance companies do not have the right to look at such information when picking candidates for insurance. It is not only unfair, but it also goes against our constitutional right to private property, and genetic testing does not always mean that the person has the disease.
In the Cato Handbook for Policymakers, private property is defined as “the foundation not only of prosperity but of freedom itself.” Through common law, state law, and the Constitution, protected property rights allow people the right to freely obtain, use, and dispose of property (Cato handbook for policymakers, 2017). As such, by the Constitution, property is protected. According to the Fourth Amendment, search and seizure of private property is strictly forbidden unless under a warrant.
Additionally, genetic data testing has never been exactly accurate. While Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA), a U.S. federal regulatory standard on human testing, has strict rules enabling analytical validity in genetic testing, clinical validity and utility are decided by insurers, health providers, and consumers. On top of this, direct-to-consumer genetic tests such as 23&Me and AncestryDNA are not CLIA certified, so some are not entirely valid. These tests are only for information for indicating what diseases you could have, and real diagnosis should be discussed with a medical professional. (How can consumers be sure a genetic test is valid and useful? - Genetics Home Reference – NIH).
Insurance companies, though, will always want the best customers, and claim that without such information, it will keep them from picking the best people to insure. After all, companies need all the information they can make about a possible client so that they can make the best decisions.
Even though this claim may be true, it still does not undermine the fact that people have the right to have ownership over their property and DNA. Also, noting that direct-to-consumer genetic testing are not 100% accurate means that most of the data that are contained in these tests wouldn’t exactly help insurance companies either.
While sites like 23&Me promise of disposing information, there are exceptions if the customer opts to sharing. According to Consumer Watchdog, roughly 80 percent of consumers share their genes (Taking An Ancestry Test Could Make It Harder To Buy Life Insurance, 2018). With sharing technology advancing, it’s important that our laws keep up.
No matter where the genetic information industry directs itself in the future, one thing certain: DNA is one’s private property, and as such should be kept to themselves and all should have the right to allow or decline disclosure of that information.
References:
Cato handbook for policymakers. (2017). Washington, DC: Cato Institute.
Genetic testing threatens the insurance industry. (2017, August 03). Retrieved from https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2017/08/03/genetic-testing-threatens-the-insurance-industry
How can consumers be sure a genetic test is valid and useful? - Genetics Home Reference - NIH. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/testing/validtest
Regalado, A. (2018, February 13). 2017 was the year consumer DNA testing blew up. Retrieved December 4, 2018, from https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610233/2017-was-the-year-consumer-dna-testing-blew-up/
Taking An Ancestry Test Could Make It Harder To Buy Life Insurance. (2018, January 18). Retrieved from http://cbslocal.com/2018/01/18/taking-ancestry-test-makes-buying-life-insurance-harder/
What is genetic discrimination? - Genetics Home Reference - NIH. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/testing/discrimination