Genetic Discrimination in Access to Life Insurance: Does Ukrainian Legislation Offer Sufficient Protection against the Adverse Consequences of the Genetic Revolution to Insurance Applicants?

Mykhailo Arych,Yann Joly

doi:10.3390/laws11010002

Mykhailo Arych, Yann Joly

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/laws11010002

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Journal: Laws	Publication Date: Dec 29, 2021
Citations: 2	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: National University of Food Technologies, McGill University

Abstract

This paper presents an inter-disciplinary study of the risk for, and protections against, genetic discrimination in access to life insurance in Ukraine. It aims (i) to review questions related to genetic information, health status, and family history currently included in Ukrainian life insurance application forms; (ii) to analyze the Ukrainian legislation related to equity and nondiscrimination and to determine whether it provides adequate protection against genetic discrimination (GD). Research findings of our insurance application forms review show that Ukrainian life insurance companies ask broad questions about health and family history that may be perceived by applicants as requiring the disclosure of their genetic information. Our legal analysis shows that today there are no genetic specific law protecting Ukrainians people against GD in insurance. However, Ukrainian human rights legislation provides some protection against multiple grounds of discrimination and given the ratification by Ukraine of the European Convention on Human Rights it is possible that these grounds could be interpreted by tribunals as also including genetic characteristics. As a next step, Ukrainian researchers should develop a survey to obtain much needed data on the incidence and impact of GD in Ukraine. Following this it will be possible for policymakers to better assess whether there is a need for an explicit non-GD law in this country. Such a law would have the benefit of explicitly aligning Ukraine’s legal framework with that of many of its European partners.

Highlights

The rapid development of genomics and growing use of genetic tests in clinical practice and research have stimulated an interest to use test results for insurance underwriting (Newson et al 2018)
To document the current practice of Ukrainian life insurers we examined life insurance application forms used by industry members
The Ukrainian life insurance industry is growing both in terms of the amount of earned premiums, +3717.5 million UAH or +410.1%, from 2010 to 2019, and by the number of policyholders, +2,242,844 insured (a 77.6% increase), for the same period

Summary

Introduction

The rapid development of genomics and growing use of genetic tests in clinical practice and research have stimulated an interest to use test results for insurance underwriting (Newson et al 2018). The use of genetics in this area remains focused on tests available for a few monogenic conditions where the information is more meaningful for insurers (for example, Huntington’s disease, hereditary breast and colon cancer) (Joly et al 2013b). Whole-genome sequencing technologies makes the assessment of the risk of a large number of common diseases foreseeable. This explains the growing interest in the use of genetic information by the insurance industry (Nicholls et al 2014) to predict future health outcomes and determine the access and rates of insurance products (Joly and Marrocco 2020)

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Results

Conclusion