I have been blogging recently about the expansion of government DNA databases and their potential uses. In a related story, last Thursday the US Senate unanimously voted for a bill that bars insurers and employers from discriminating based on a person's genetic makeup. It is expected that the US House of Representatives will pass the bill this week, and for President Bush to sign it soon thereafter.
The new law would keep insurance companies from denying health coverage or charging higher insurance premiums based on someone's DNA. It would also prevent employers from gathering DNA information or using DNA information to make job-related decisions, for instance in hiring or firing employees.
In a Wall Street Journal article on the legislation, it said that, "A survey by Johns Hopkins University's Genetics and Public Policy Center last year found 92% of the adults surveyed were concerned that genetic information could be used against them. Just 24% said they trusted health insurers with such information, and only 16% trusted their employers."
While not a perfect bill, it should help those who have genetically-related health problems and who worry, like the folks in my IEEE Spectrum story a few years back on electronic health records, that they or their children will be discriminated against.
BTW, a story in the Washington Post appeared earlier last week spoke of how the state and federal criminal justice systems are using DNA databases to solve crimes even if a suspect is not in the database. All the police need to do is to get a "close enough" match an existing DNA profile, which might lead to the identification of a relative of a person in the database.
More on how the US government is using DNA to attack crime can be found at the President's DNA Initiative website as well as in a weekend story by the LA Times on how California is aggressively using DNA as a crime-fighting technique.
