Ah! the golden age of personalised medicine, when medicines will be tailored to your unique genetic make-up. Well, the time has come, and the New York Times reports that many consumers are too scared to use it. "It’s pretty clear that the public is afraid of taking advantage of genetic testing," says Francis S. Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health. "If that continues, the future of medicine that we would all like to see happen stands the chance of being dead on arrival."

Although health insurance companies deny that they will discriminate against anyone on the basis of genetics, Americans do not believe them. As a consequence, they refuse to take tests which could spot whether they are at risk of ailments like breast cancer or colon cancer, or they pay for mail-order tests out of their own pocket. The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which passed the House of Representatives last year, would ban the use of genetic information to deny benefits or raise premiums. But this still has not passed through the Senate. Doctors say that the Act would allay the anxiety of patients who fear that the loss of their job or denial of medical treatment because of pre-existing conditions. Linda Vahdat, who runs a breast cancer research program in New York, estimates that 20% of her patients pay for tests in cash to avoid alerting insurance companies. ~ New York Times, Feb 24