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O. W. J. Quarrell, MD, MRCP; M. Bloch, PhD; M. R. Hayden, MB, ChB, PhD
The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada

JAMA. 1989;262(17):2384-2385.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor. —

We read, with interest, the article by Brandt et al¹ in which they described the preliminary results of their predictive testing program for Huntington's disease. We agree that presymptomatic diagnosis of a neurodegenerative disorder, for which no effective treatment is available, raises a number of ethical and social issues. However, we are concerned that the statement "individuals may well be advised to be cautious about disclosing either their participation in testing or test results" may be interpreted by insurance companies as encouraging individuals to withhold information. In addition, the authors are worried about insurance companies discriminating against individuals based on the results of genetic tests.

Any discussion of life insurance in relation to predictive tests must take account of reality, and whether we like it or not, insurance companies believe in discrimination. They assign individuals to a group; the members of that group have approximately . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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