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The life insurance business is all about betting on how long you’re likely to live. Now, one company is turning to the hot, but still unproven, field of epigenetics to try to make that bet more scientific.
GWG Life, which buys life insurance policies from people who don’t want or can’t afford them anymore, last month started requiring those people to turn over a saliva sample. Its quarry: patterns of DNA methylation. In layman’s terms, it analyzes the samples to see whether certain genes are switched on or off at hundreds of specific spots.
In theory, that could help the company predict your life span. In theory.
“Is that more predictive than whether someone smokes or drinks or has a hobby of alligator wrestling? I don’t see that,” said Mark Rothstein, a bioethicist at the University of Louisville who studies the use of genetic and epigenetic information.
GWG is just the latest in a rush of entrepreneurs peering into DNA for clues about how fast people are aging.
Several companies have started marketing mail-order tests to measure the lengths of people’s telomeres. (Those are the caps of DNA at the end...