The goal of this project is to address ethical, social and legal issues raised by the Human Genome Initiative (HGI) with respect to the institution of insurance. New screening and diagnostic technologies derived from HGI research will greatly increase information available for insurance underwriting. This will not only be useful to insurance companies reviewing individual applications, but also to corporations assessing prospective employees and their families for possible economic burdens placed on employer funded plans. Public insurance programs (e.g., Medicare, Medicaid, SSDI) will be affected because the burden of those deemed uninsurable in the private sector will fall upon them. A collaborative interdisciplinary approach will be employed: 1) to describe and classify the variety of screening and diagnostic techniques likely to develop; 2) to identify, classify and evaluate the implications for private and public insurance markets; 3) to identify the social and economic incentives and disincentives to application of new technologies; 4) to identify and analyze normative ethical problems that arise out of the implementation of genetic screening tests; 5) to assess public policy issues likely to arise; 6) to evaluate current laws and regulations; and 7) to develop guidelines and policy recommendations. A matrix of 54 unique situations with potentially different ethical, social and legal problems will be developed and used to analyze laws and policies. Analytic strategies will include: testing analogous case based approaches, surveying of a representative sample of the insurance industry, utilizing a panel of industry and legal experts, searching of state and federal statutory data banks and computerized case law services, reviewing scholarly legal commentary, and surveying recognized insurance and legal experts and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
| Ostrer, H; Allen, W; Crandall, L A et al. (1993) Insurance and genetic testing: where are we now? Am J Hum Genet 52:565-77 |
| McCrary, S V; Allen, B; Moseley, R et al. (1993) Ethical and practical implications of the human genome initiative for family medicine. Arch Fam Med 2:1158-63 |
