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Banning genetic discrimination http://www.nature.com/news/2008/08...

US close to a law preventing discrimination based on genes.

Meredith Wadman

The US Senate has voted unanimously to outlaw genetic discrimination.

The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act bans US employers from
using genetic information in hiring, firing, promotion and
compensation decisions, and from collecting genetic information from
employees. Similarly, the bill prevents health plans and insurers
from denying coverage or boosting premium prices based on a person's
genetic information, such as whether they have gene variants known to
increase disease risk. It also forbids them from requesting or
requiring people to take genetic tests. Other countries, including
France and Austria, also ban the use of genetic information in such decisions.

The House of Representatives, which has previously passed very
similar legislation that stalled in the Senate, is expected to
approve the measure as early as next week; President Bush is expected
to sign it into law soon after that.

The 95-0 Senate vote culminates a 13-year campaign for legal
protection waged by geneticists, policy-makers and patient groups
concerned that fears of job and insurance discrimination could stifle
the benefits of the new era of personalized genetics.

Senator Edward Kennedy (Democrat, Massachusetts), one of the bill's
leading sponsors, called the bill "the first civil rights bill of the
new century of the life sciences." Senator Tom Coburn (Republican,
Oklahoma) had raised objections to the bill that kept it stalled for
eight months. The Senate measure concedes something to Coburn by
making it harder for someone to sue their employer for genetic
discrimination if an insurer is also culpable in the same situation -
although in language vague enough that it will likely require court
battles to clarify. Coburn sought to save companies in this situation
from the harsher penalties the bill applies to them as compared to insurers.

C 2008 Nature Publishing Group
Posted on 04/28/08, 04:04 am