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Marvin A. Dewar, MD, JD; Ray Moseley, PhD; Harry Ostrer, MD; Lee Crandall, PhD; David Nye, PhD; Bill Allen, JD
University of Florida College of Medicine Gainesville

JAMA. 1992;267(9):1207-1208.

	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.

—The article by the American Medical Association's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs regarding genetic testing by employers¹ is timely and welcome. For many Americans, the workplace is the major source of insurance; therefore, employment-related genetic testing is likely to impact not only on employment, but on the availability and affordability of life, health, and disability insurance.

Insurers quantify the risk characteristics of individuals and small groups to establish the price and availability of insurance. New screening and diagnostic technologies will expand the genetic information available to insurers for stratifying the risk in the insurance pool. Individuals at increased risk for genetic diseases (including those whose risk of disease is clinically apparent, subclinical, or merely probabilistic) may find insurance increasingly unaffordable or altogether unavailable.

Insurers may apply genetic information inappropriately. Individual risk will be overestimated if the concepts of penetrance and variable expressivity are not considered. . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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