Insurers want all available information to assess the actuarial risks in insuring an individual. The compulsory disclosure of family and individual medical history is routine. Medical ethics guidelines require researchers to disclose to volunteers the possible consequences of their participation. If the proposed insurance standard is followed, one consequence would be that the volunteers' genetic test would have to be handed over to the insurance company. Haan fears a collapse in volunteers for research involving genetic testing.
Genetic tests are only ''crudely predictive'' of a propensity to certain diseases.
They take no account of preventative strategies or available treatments. They also cannot predict future treatments which will become available. What's more, the tests are of one or two genes of a person's 70,000 genes. Although one could say that, as a group, people with certain gene characteristics are high risk, this cannot be said of each individual within the group. Haan also fears a public health backlash.