Insurers are to be banned from requesting results of new genetic tests to stop women at risk of breast cancer being frightened away from life-saving screening.
A voluntary freeze on the tests - prompted by fears of a 'genetic underclass' rendered uninsurable by a strong likelihood of serious illness - is due to expire shortly.
But Health Secretary John Reid is expected to announce this week that it will be extended for another five years, after warnings from charities that potential cancer sufferers would otherwise be too fearful of the financial consequences to get tested. Breakthrough for Breast Cancer found that a third of women with a strong family history of the disease - those most at risk - would refuse tests if they thought that insurers could use the results to deny them life insurance, making it difficult for them to get mortgages.
'We need families who have experience of breast cancer to feel that they shouldn't be backward in coming forward for testing,' said a Department of Health source. 'This is a really important part of driving up cancer survival rates.'
The mutant genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 trigger a severely heightened risk - though not a certainty - of women developing breast cancer, usually striking at a relatively young age, and of ovarian cancer: men who carry it are more likely to get prostate cancer.
Some women who test positive choose to have their breasts surgically removed, in a drastic attempt to reduce the risk of tumours, while others rely on close and regular monitoring. The test can be crucial because hereditary forms of the cancer typically strike before middle age, yet routine mammograms are offered only to older women. About one in 1,000 British women carries BRCA1 and one in 700 its 'sister' gene.
Under the moratorium agreed with the industry, it is expected that insurers will not be allowed to ask if people have had genetic testing unless they apply for policies worth over £500,000, in which case they can ask about the results of one test, for the rare and inevitably fatal Huntington's disease. The disorder is unusual in that those who carry the mutant gene will inevitably develop it, whereas the rogue cancer genes do not always cause tumours.
When the first voluntary moratorium was imposed in 2003, only a handful of reliable tests could pinpoint susceptibility to generally rare inherited disorders. Since then, however, tests for other inherited diseases - including myotonic dystrophy and hereditary motor and sensory neuropathy, as well as cancer and a form of Alzheimer's - have become widely available, while over the next five years tests for more common and complex illnesses are likely to be developed.
'We know this will be a great relief for women with a family history of breast cancer,' said Antonia Bunnin, director of policy and campaigns at Breakthrough for Breast Cancer, which campaigned for an extension of the moratorium. 'Choosing to take a genetic test is a difficult enough decision without the added fear that insurance companies may use this information against them.'
