British Researchers Discover Gene/Disease Connections

A recent article from the United Kingdom's Daily Mail reports on the discovery by British researchers of a dozen genes that can lead to seven common health problems, including diabetes and heart disease and other diseases that affect 20 million Britons. Another article, also from the Daily Mail, quotes a professor who fears that insurance firms could use genetic information to raise health premiums on people who carry those genes.

Dr. Richard Ashcroft, who teaches biomedical ethics at the University of London, is afraid of discrimination against certain patients because of their genetic makeup. According to the Daily Mail, he said that insurance companies may have a faulty understanding of genetics and the result would be unfairly high insurance premiums for certain clients.

For their part, insurance companies who offer life, critical illness or health insurance say that they should have the right to use genetic information in figuring premiums. Their reasoning, says the Daily Mail, is that more people than expected may file claims and the result would be bankrupt insurance companies.

Dr. Ashcroft's concerns were raised after the researchers had announced their findings regarding genes and common diseases. Writing in the British Medical Journal and quoted by the Daily Mail, Dr Ashcroft warned: "It is important to note how genetic information can be misunderstood, or its importance overestimated, and therefore used in discriminatory ways. The point that is often neglected is that what is theoretically justified may be undermined by the less than perfect behaviour of people working under pressure."

In the same article, another ethicist disagreed with Ashcroft. Soren Holm, professor of medical ethics at Cardiff Law School, said there was no reason to withhold genetic information from insurance companies because they already use other information-- such as body mass index, cholesterol concentration and the results of physical examinations--in figuring premiums.

Researchers who discovered the gene/disease connections say that a simple blood test could predict a lifetime of health problems. One issue, however, is that the presence of the gene does not necessarily mean that the disease will appear in a person. On the positive side, the presence of the gene or genes could lead a person to make changes in lifestyle that could lengthen that person's life.

The study involved 200 scientists who analyzed the DNA of thousands of Britons.

Professor Peter Weissberg, of the British Heart Foundation, was quoted by the Daily Mail as saying, "The results should help us develop better tests to identify people at risk of heart disease and will enhance our understanding of its underlying mechanisms, ultimately leading to new treatments."

Sources:
Daily Mail, Gene test could predict health over a lifetime, www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html
Daily Mail, Gene tests 'to mean higher insurance premiums', www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html