Familiar faces pick up Eureka Prizes

A landmark campaign that led to legislation banning Australian life insurers from using genetic test results to discriminate in underwriting has seen Monash University Associate Professor Jane Tiller win the Eureka Prize for Emerging Leader in Science, Technology and Engineering.

By uniting researchers, clinicians, patient groups and policymakers, Tiller removed a major barrier to potentially life-saving genomic testing.

“People were making decisions about genetic testing based on insurance fears, not health needs,” she said.