Along with many potential benefits, personalized medicine brings with it legal and ethical questions that we must answer as a society:

• Who should have access to a person’s genetic profile? Employers? The government? Life insurance companies? Health insurers?
• How will we protect genetic privacy and prevent genetic discrimination in the workplace and in our health care?
• And how will we as consumers use genetic information to our benefit?

Questions like these loom large as the genomic revolution accelerates. Lawmakers, scientists and health advocacy groups have spent more than a decade urging federal legislation to prevent genetic discrimination. In 2008 Congress overwhelmingly approved the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), and President Bush signed it into law. Many states have additional laws in place.

The Jackson Laboratory is committed to giving policy makers, legislators, ethicists, educators and consumers the information they need to address the ramifications of personalized medicine and to protect against genetic discrimination in matters of health insurance and employment.

How do technology and research relate to each other? Learn more