PEOPLE with a family history of breast cancer, Alzheimer’s and other serious diseases will be given a five-year financial reprieve next week when insurers extend their moratorium on the use of genetic tests to set premiums, The Times has learnt.

The moratorium, which prevents insurers from using the results of genetic tests to increase premiums, was due to run out in November next year. After negotiations with the Department of Health, however, insurers have decided to postpone using genetic tests until after 2010.

The extension will help to quell concerns that the tests will create a “genetic underclass” of uninsurable individuals. Experts were worried that people would avoid taking tests that were vital to their health out of fear that they would subsequently be unable to buy insurance.

The Association of British Insurers (ABI) yesterday refused to comment on the moratorium. “We’ve been having constructive discussions for a while now and hope that they come to something,” a spokesman said.

But Richard Harvey, chairman of the ABI, used the association’s conference yesterday to hint at an extension. “We know that the moratorium has given reassurance to very many people,” Mr Harvey said.

Under the moratorium, agreed with the Health Department in November 2001, insurers cannot ask customers whether they have had genetic testing unless they want to buy a life insurance policy worth more than £500,000.

Before selling a policy worth more than £500,000 insurers are permitted to ask for the results of genetic tests that have been approved by the Government’s Genetics and Insurance Committee. So far the committee has approved only the test for Huntington’s disease, an inherited condition caused by a mutant gene that makes sufferers’ brain cells degenerate.

The committee had been considering the ABI’s request for approval of tests for breast cancer and Alzheimer’s disease when the moratorium was agreed. The approval process was frozen at that point.

The Health Department refused to comment on the possibility of an extension of the moratorium. The Human Genetics Commission, the Government’s advisory body on developments in genetic testing, said that it was aware that discussions on the moratorium were continuing. The commission refused to comment on the possibility of an extension.

The moratorium was originally designed to give insurers, genetics experts, health bodies and the Health Department breathing space in which to decide a compromise on the use of genetic tests.

For two years before the moratorium, insurers took into account seven genetic tests when setting premiums for life, critical illness, income protection and long-term care insurance.

The tests were for Huntington’s disease, two types of breast cancer, early onset Alzheimer’s disease, myotonic dystrophy, familial adenomatous polyposis, multiple endocrine neoplasia and hereditary motor and sensory neuropathy.

The ABI has since decided that tests for myotonic dystrophy are not sufficiently predictive, while people with the polyposis and neuropathy genes display symptoms that make it unnecessary for insurers to ask for test results.

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