Family History is one of the most significant factors in deter-mining whether or not an individual will be diagnosed with a critical illness or die at an earlier age than expected. By definition, in insurance medicine, family history is the medical history of an insured’s immediate family members. Immediate family members are parents and siblings of the insured. Why is family history of concern to underwriters? There is a strong correlation between family history and medical history of the insured. Many medical problems seem to run in families. Some of these are due to genetic factors but for others no gene has been found. In these situations, environment, lifestyle and geographical location are thought to be contributing factors. One of the most visible medical problems may be obesity for example. No gene has been found, but it is not unusual to see a family in which all the individuals exceed the weights on current, standard, build tables. As a point of interest; Alexander Graham Bell not only invented the telephone, but it appears that he discovered that a person whose parents lived to age 80, lives about 20 years longer than a person whose parents died before they reached 60. More recent insurance studies have confirmed this theory. They have shown that the highest mortality ratios are in those whose parents are both dead at the time of policy issue. The lowest ratios are found in those who have both parents living at the time of policy issue, regardless of the age of the insured. Have you ever wondered why some people seem to catch every bug or virus around while the person who sits next to them in the office is rarely ill; or why your best friend just had a heart attack and you didn’t. Well, it appears that both genes and environment play a significant part.

An example of this is diabetes. It has been found that there is a genetic susceptibility to acquiring diabetes. However, environmental factors also play a significant part in an individual becoming diabetic. Diabetes often leads to heart disease or kidney disease causing early death and, in most cases, disqualifying a person from critical illness coverage. Other notable genetically inherited diseases include: Polycystic kidney disease, Sickle cell anemia, thalassemia and hemophilia are all diseases caused by gene factors. These are examples of diseases that we know are caused by genes. But what about cancer, depression, multiple sclerosis or heart disease. It depends. Sometimes the disease may be genetic, other times it may be environment, or a combination of both.