Many patients often refuse to undergo genetic testing for fear their negative results would make it impossible to get health insurance.

“It’s pretty clear that the public is afraid of taking advantage of genetic testing. If that continues, the future of medicine that we would all like to see happen stands the chance of being dead on arrival,” said Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health quoted by the New York Times.

Dr. Collins further says citizens are afraid to engage in DNA testing due to worries their results could negatively influence their employers or health insurance carriers. That’s the reason why, many people are paying private labs to have tests secretly done. It is worth it to people to pay exorbitant sums to keep the results out of their medical records.

People are encouraged to have their DNA tests done, because in some cases they could make more informed health care decisions if they learned whether they had inherited an elevated risk of disease like breast and colon cancer. Still, these people refuse to do so because of the potentially dire economic consequences.

Insurers, on the other hand, say they do not ask prospective customers about genetic test results, or require testing. “It’s an anecdotal fear. Our industry is not interested in any way, shape or form in discriminating based on a genetic marker,” said Mohit Ghose, a representative for America’s Health Insurance Plans, whose members provide benefits for 200 million Americans.

Still, a recent study by the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute found that in 7 of 92 underwriting decisions, insurance providers evaluating hypothetical applicants said they would deny coverage, charge more for premiums or exclude certain conditions from coverage based on genetic test results.

This thing is against the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which passed the House of Representatives by a wide margin last year. The law would prohibit insurers from using genetic information to deny benefits or raise premiums for both group and individual policies. The bill would also bar employers from collecting genetic information or using it to make decisions about hiring, firing, or compensation. For the moment, the bill is stalled in the Senate.