If those with good “3bn biochemical letters of human genome” ask insurance companies for rebates, what about the bad?

Sir, in screaming silence I read what Clive Cookson writes about “technologies advancing at extraordinary speed to make possible ultra-precise manipulation of the genome” “Engineered evolution takes another step forward” January 18.

In March 2000, after reading “the government plans to allow insurance companies to use DNA testing to assess whether people are at risk of inheriting serious illness and should pay higher premiums”, I wrote an Op-Ed titled “Human genetics made inhuman”.

In it I expressed many of the concerns about the discriminatory implications of DNA mapping and expressed the view that something needed to be done before any release of DNA information caused irreversible damage. I there suggested “that all insurance companies design a plan which obligates them to issue policies for all of those who undertake a genetic examination. This policy should cover the negative impact and consequence that could arise from anyone getting access to such information.”

But I also admitted: “I know this is only a Band-Aid, but what else can I do? I am not among those that resign and lie down to cry, even though this matter actually would justify just that.”

Now, 17 years later, I have no idea on whether something, anything, has been done to save humans from a release of the information contained in a “DNA sequencing, which reads out all 3bn biochemical letters of an individual human genome [and which can be done] in a few hours for less than $1,000”.

Sir, I ask, if with only $1,000 investment, I can get a test testifying I have a good DNA, and which perhaps allows me to for instance negotiate special favored rates with an insurance company, how will that affect those whose tests indicate a not so good or even a very risky DNA, something that in fact could include me or the ones I love?

Environmental challenges, 1st class robots, 3rd class robots, intelligent artificial intelligence, dumb artificial intelligence, terrorism, nuclear weapons, fast and cheap DNA testing, crazy bank regulators, structural unemployment… and the list of challenges goes on and on. How will a world that spends so much of its very scarce attention span glued to so very attractive juicy fake/irrelevant news stories cope?

@PerKurowski

We all need an insurance against what they are going to think they have discovered in our DNA

Sir in “The fallacy of the ‛choice agenda’”, July 18, Sir Samuel Brittan enters briefly into asking what will happen to health insurance when DNA records come to provide detailed health prognosis. I would answer, just what happens when credit records provide detailed information to lenders, that the borrowers often get bunched together into small groups of misfortunate outcasts that have to take care of each other. For instance, among the subprime we find those who are not able to serve a loan at very high interests, and therefore lose out, and those who by being able to serve their loan de-facto evidence they deserved a lower rate, and therefore also lost, making it truly hard to distinguish a winner.

Since Brittan also correctly states that “insurance is well suited to covering events that are unpredictable at the individual level” let me say that for over a decade I have held that the most important new insurance coverage we all need is that of the risks derived from what they are going to think they have discovered in our DNA.

What we first need is an insurance that covers the risks of the discoveries.

Sir, Stephen Cechetti argues in “A future of public healthcare for all” July 3 that the advances in genetics and that will be able to provide for better individualized projections of expected health costs will translate into a market failure that will force the private health insurance system into the arms of the public sector. Actually it is not a market failure that will do so since in fact the market could only benefit from knowing more about the risks, it is the market results that will be unacceptable, or at least let us hope so, since if those prognosed as much healthier sneak out from sharing the risks, society could turn much much nastier. For instance, there is nothing to stop a good health prognosis to also influence such variables as the admittance to universities.

Before we put any new safeguard system in place, which will certainly only happen when it is much too late for many, what we most need is an insurance that covers the risks of whatever extra costs we could suffer because of what they discover in our genes, and have everyone subscribe such an insurance, before they are allowed to take any genetic samples

The sale of healthcare should follow stricter standards than the sale of timeshares

Sir, Brad DeLong in “Obama can remedy an ailing healthcare system” (why only Obama?), June 4, says that “the US spends twice as much as Western Europe for little benefit” but then continues writing only about the need of increasing the health-insurance coverage and which presumably could only increase health-spending.

I am a foreigner and no expert in the area of health assistance in the US (probably thankfully) but, from the little I have seen the number of uninsured is large, but so are also the costs they are charged.

Whatever you do there should be no place for timeshare selling procedures in healthcare and there should be a rule that clearly states that you are not allowed to charge someone without coverage, more for medicine or any health service than what you would charge a covered patient.

By the way, and before you lose all sense of social solidarity, please develop an insurance that covers any additional costs because of what could be discovered in your DNA when gene tested.

We need an insurance for what could be discovered mapping our genes.

Sir, Patti Waldmeir in “The Dangerous new age of the genome”, May 9, writes about some legislative initiatives in the US that look to combat the “genetic discrimination” that might result from mapping the genes. This might be a good start but as I wrote in an article titled “Human genetics made inhuman” that I published in 2000, I submit that a better, or at least a more practical approach, might be to ask the insurance companies to come up with an insurance that covers any increased health insurance costs that can result from such a mapping when compared to an average citizen, and then require evidence that such an insurance has been contracted for before allowing at least any young person to have his or her genes mapped.