Genetic testing prompts legislation and private policy development.

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: UP FRONT: News, Trends & Analysis

As Congress considers federal legislation to ensure that information gleaned from genetic testing cannot be used to discriminate in hiring and healthcare coverage decision-making processes, one corporation with a large stake in promoting genetic data gathering has announced its own policy intended to protect its 300,000 employees.

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The policy, recently announced by IBM, a leading information technology company with a growing involvement in information-based medicine which relies on genetic information, may be the first for a major corporation, according to the New York Times.

As medical research in this area is expanding and a market is developing for genetic testing and counseling, polls have shown that consumers' fears are growing that information gleaned from genetic tests could be used to prevent them from getting jobs or health insurance. This is with good reason, as there have already been cases in which employers have tried to do just that.

In one well-known 2002 case, Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Company (BNSF) settled with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for $2.2 million for its efforts to use blood tests of 36 of its employees without their knowledge in an attempt to prove that their injuries were due to a rare genetic condition instead of work-related stress. Al-though BNSF denied that it violated the law, it agreed not to use genetic...