Today, it should be a historical day for consumer genomics. With overwhelming support the Senate passed by a vote of 95-0 on the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (S. 358).
The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) paves the way for the responsible use of genetic information. Now consumers can have a peace in mind when they order a genetic test to manage their health proactively: their genetic information would not be used against them.
GINA protects against discrimination with respect to health insurance and employment by the following:
· Prohibiting group health plans and issuers offering coverage on the group or individual market from basing eligibility determinations or adjusting premiums or contributions on the basis of genetic information. They cannot request, require or purchase the results of genetic tests, or disclose genetic information.
· Prohibiting issuers of Medigap policies from adjusting pricing or conditioning eligibility on the basis of genetic information. They cannot request, require or purchase the results of genetic tests, or disclose genetic information.
· Prohibiting employers from firing, refusing to hire, or otherwise discriminating with respect to compensation, terms, conditions or privileges of employment. Employers may not request, require or purchase genetic information, and may not disclose genetic information. Similar provisions apply to employment agencies and labor organizations.
Showing posts with label genetic testing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genetic testing. Show all posts
Feb 13, 2008
Genetic Testing on NBC News: How to Interpret the Results?
Bioinformatics scientists have long been helping biomedical researchers to interpret their genomics data. But who should/will/could help consumers to interpret their results? NBC News aired its investigation yesterday.
Having recognized the same probem since last year, I have been advocating the study of consumer bioinformatics. Bioinformatics has been traditionally defined as the scientific research to use computers to handle and genomics information.
Genomics testing is no longer for research uses only; it has reached millions of consumers with a few mouse clicks away since November 2007. Similarly, bioinformatics is no longer a scientific discipline just for research projects and scientists.
Overtime, we noticed that consumers have shown increasingly interests in bioinformatics. For instance, Hugh Reinhoff has started a wiki of “mydaughtersdna.org” to investigate the interpretation of her daughter’s genome. An active community has been formed around this wiki. Also, amateur scientists start having consumer access to super computing resources previous only available to heavily-funded researchers. Creative computing resources, such as the “Elastic Computing Cloud” by Amazon allows anyone to run parallel MPI-BLAST for less than $1.
We have coined the term “consumer bioinformatics” to emphasize the urgent need for bioinformatics in the consumer domain. Already a challenging problem in the research domain, we believe consumer bioinformatics will further invigorate the development of bioinformatics as a discipline and its applications.
Having recognized the same probem since last year, I have been advocating the study of consumer bioinformatics. Bioinformatics has been traditionally defined as the scientific research to use computers to handle and genomics information.
Genomics testing is no longer for research uses only; it has reached millions of consumers with a few mouse clicks away since November 2007. Similarly, bioinformatics is no longer a scientific discipline just for research projects and scientists.
Overtime, we noticed that consumers have shown increasingly interests in bioinformatics. For instance, Hugh Reinhoff has started a wiki of “mydaughtersdna.org” to investigate the interpretation of her daughter’s genome. An active community has been formed around this wiki. Also, amateur scientists start having consumer access to super computing resources previous only available to heavily-funded researchers. Creative computing resources, such as the “Elastic Computing Cloud” by Amazon allows anyone to run parallel MPI-BLAST for less than $1.
We have coined the term “consumer bioinformatics” to emphasize the urgent need for bioinformatics in the consumer domain. Already a challenging problem in the research domain, we believe consumer bioinformatics will further invigorate the development of bioinformatics as a discipline and its applications.
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