Considering how easy it is to get ahold of someone else's DNA and the potential advantages of genetic testing, I think it makes more sense to push for anti-discrimination laws instead of avoiding genetic testing.
I don't deny there's a problem, but this is at best a several-year stopgap, not a solution. You will want them to sequence your DNA to determine which cancer drugs will work best when you are sitting in an office with cancer.
The problem is that medical insurance is currently uncomfortably between actual "insurance", coverage for unknown and expensive catastrophic events, and "health care", a program for spreading the costs of health care between many people to equalize the burdens and also sort of cover the insurance use cases. Expanding our knowledge of what you might get starts breaking down the premises the insurance system is based on.
Sure, you can lie. But god help you if you ever need coverage [even for a non-related disease] and the insurance just flat out won't cover you.
I for one rather don't know and don't. One of the major reasons is exactly the one described above.
I used these instructions: http://www.ianlogan.co.uk/Submission.htm
And if you have some marker that means that your children cannot get good jobs with health insurance - congratulations you have just condemned your kids to live on the bread line.
Update: Thanks po. I hadn't really considered the risk of submitting data to 23andme in the first place. Updated the title to reflect this as well.
OT: Despite knowing this, I am sure I would have tried the service anyway. However, after seeing the data, I haven't found it too helpful. Probably, because most of their data is based on older Europeans and I don't fall in that category.
A. There is no way to predict accurately individual risk of disease based on genetic information EXCEPT for a few rare diseases associated with highly penetrant mutations such as Huntington's disase, BRCA mutations (breast and ovarian cancer syndrome). Even then, taking 23andme as an example, they do not sequence enough of the BRCA gene to provide meaningful results.
B. Detailed risk profiles do not appear important to health insurance companies. You can work this out by the questions they ask you - they are mainly interested in pre-existing conditions. Using blood pressure, cholesterol and family history it is possible to generate a pretty good estimation of the risk of heart disease, but AFAIK an insurance company doesn't care about this.
It is also unlikely that in the future genomic information as it exists today will ever be able to predict risk accurately.
So don't worry. Or even better, don't waste your money and don't worry.
If I upload my address book to Google, they can see who I know. Often who I know is also who knows me. Without the people in my address book's consent, I and my friends have collectively published the information for people who have opted out.
One is highly personal and immutable.
The other is less personal, however hard you try, and shouldn't be on the same level as rants and bilge drinking pictures.
This must change the way insurance companies decide to cover, and how much they charge.
Or health care itself must change from largely insurance provided, to "something else."
The reason I ask is that I'm considering using them to analyze my and my newborn son's genetic code. I have not combed thru their TOS with a fine toothed comb, however. Pls advise. Thx!
Carrying a gene does not automatically translate into getting a disease or even a significantly elevated chance of getting a disease. That only works if the chance is approaching near certainty, absent any symptoms if you don't use a high enough cut-off you'll be engaging in a high-tech variation of medical students disease.
Recently a University in the UK was doing some brain scans for psychological research using volunteers. Two of these volunteers were found to have brain tumors that they would not have found out about until probably too late which is why I wish testing was more streamlined..
