Ethics and Potential Opportunities and Risks of Corporate Uses of Socioeconomic Polygenic Risk Scores

Abstract

As polygenic indexes become increasingly available and more predictive, complex questions about their appropriate use arise. Virtually unstudied are the incentives that firms—profit- maximizing entities that produce goods and services—face regarding the acquisition and use of genetic information. Of significant concern is that the incentives for firms to use PGIs exist within a legal and policy landscape that is inadequate to meet the associated challenges. Since we may be quite close to (or already in) a world in which firms seek to pay for individuals’ genetic information, the associated ethical and legal issues are in urgent need of attention. Here, we begin a conversation about the potential risks and benefits of firms’ uses of PGIs. We do so in two ways. First, we offer a very simple model, rooted in economic theory, of a profit-maximizing firm that can gain information about a single consumer’s genome. We use the model to show that, depending on the specific economic environment faced by the firm, it would be willing to pay for noisy genetic measures, even if they allow for only a small reduction in uncertainty. Second, we describe two plausible scenarios in which different kinds of firms (insurance and financial services) could conceivably use PGIs to maximize profits, but which also entail knotty ethical and policy issues. It is important to problematize these issues now in order to emphasize the need for consideration of associated ethical, legal, and policy responses.

Keywords: Genomics, Firms