Genetic discrimination in insurance and employment

The results of the Human Genome project will eventually have a great impact on medicine. However, the expansion of genetic testing due to these results exacerbates ethical, legal, and economic problems related to the project even today. Virtually free access to the data of testing would present an encroachment on personal freedom, since it may lead to discrimination based on genetic characteristics, i.e., genetic discrimination. Examples of this discrimination are already known; they include unsubstantiated refusals to employ carriers of certain alleles and denials of life or health insurance coverage and the ability to adopt a child. The use of genetic information in the insurance and employment fields is of primary concern due to its economic importance. Consumers consider genetic discrimination in these areas to be intolerable moral and social injustice. Genetic discrimination may eventually lead to the formation of a class of people who cannot buy an insurance policy, and, in the employment field, rejection of persons with "undesirable" genes infringes on citizens' rights to equal opportunity. However, selection for genetic characteristics in employment is justified if these characteristics determine sensitivity to occupational hazards.