 Ooops double helixed again ! by autotelic Thie US Senate has at last passed the Genetic Nondiscrimination Act ( GINA) banning health insurers setting premiums or denying cover on the basis of the results of genetic tests , as long as applicants have no existing symptoms. The Act is also supposed to prevent similar discrimination by employers and GINA has been hailed as the first civil rights bill of the new century of life sciences. The House of Representatives now has to approve GINA and its expected to be signed into law by george Bush. Geneticists who hope the Act will lead to a new era of personalised medicine say they hope that people will now feel more willing to take genetic tests but of course there is no guarantee that insurers wont find other ways around GINA , critics already feel employers have a loophole in their right to look at medical records which could include reference to genetic test results after making a conditional job offer but there is also a larger worry, whats to stop Government changing mind or just abusing this data once genetic testing or profiling - because thats essentially what it is , becomes the norm? There is no doubt that more genetic research and gene therapies will have a positive side but lets not kid ourselves either, some of the most appallingly AIDS impacted regions of the world still dont have the medicines and resources to tackle the problem ,the poor are always the last to be treated and in the age of lucrative personalised medicine its a fair bet that they wont even be invited to join the queue. Politicians have been buck passing on GINA for a decade now and first civil rights bill or not it remains to be seen how the rights of the individual fare in the 21st century when we all know that information about genetic testing has a monetary value and to insurers , employers and god knows who else and that once sensitive personal data gets onto computer storage systems its about as secure as one's personal profile on Facebook.
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