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In the October issue of Nature Genetics, Tom Wilkie of the Biomedical Ethics Programme at The Wellcome Trust discusses the issues that genetic testing raises in the area of insurance, and compares the situation in Britain with that in the US [Wilkie, T. (1998) Nature Genet. 20, 119-121]. Because the UK has a National Health Service, it is the area of life assurance (rather than health insurance) that is currently most affected by the increasing availability of genetic tests. Wilkie points out that, while the Human Genetics Advisory Commission has recommended a moratorium on the use of genetic test information by insurers (The implications of genetic testing for insurance - paper from the UK Human Genetics Advisory Commission), the Association of British Insurers believes that some currently available genetic tests can provide iinformation that could legitimately be used by insurers (Association of British Insurers Code of Practice on Genetic Testing).

Comment: This is a succinct and lucid summing up of the issues. Wilkie makes the point strongly that in the area of common, late-onset disorders that have a genetic component, current understanding is far too limited to permit actuarially sound predictions of the effect of specific genetic variants on life expectancy.