Posted on 04/22/2008 8:23:54 PM PDT by neverdem
Congress reached an agreement clearing the way for a bill to prohibit discrimination by employers and health insurers on the basis of genetic tests.
Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican who had been almost single-handedly holding up action on the bill, said in an interview Tuesday that most of his concerns had been resolved and predicted that the bill would pass soon.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who is chairman of the Senate Health Committee, said a bipartisan agreement had been reached to move the bill to the Senate floor.
Proponents say the new law, more than a dozen years in the making, would help usher in an age of genetic medicine, in which DNA tests might help predict if a person is at risk of a disease, allowing action to be taken to prevent it.
Some of the tests already exist, like one for breast cancer risk, and new ones are being introduced almost every month. But backers of the legislation say many people are afraid of taking such tests because they fear the results would be used to deny them employment or health insurance.
“This bill removes a significant obstacle to the advancement of personalized medicine,” said Edward Abrahams, the executive director of the Personalized Medicine Coalition. His group is an organization of drug and diagnostic companies, academic institutions and patient groups that advocate using genetic information to choose the most appropriate treatment for each patient.
The agreement would end a 13-year odyssey for the bill, first proposed in 1995 by Louise Slaughter, a House Democrat from western New York, who has been promoting it ever since.
The bill, called the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, or GINA, has had broad support in Congress but has never managed to pass both houses in...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Study modern genetics.
Modern medicine says almost nothing about congenital disease which occurs in the womb due to malnutrition or intake of drugs or being exposed accidentally to hazardous substances.
What intake of drugs, fetal alcohol syndrome? Millions of kids were born to mothers who smoked tobacco with no known adverse effects. Crack cocaine babies is a crock if you check the literature.
Comment# 1 has two more links about genetics, and comment#13 has another one on that thread.
The Pill as Pollutant (Pill-derived estrogen in water supply causing intersex)
Heart exam, EKG recommended before children get ADHD drugs
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Thanks neverdem.
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