The ideas contained in this book matured gradually over a period of some two years at the end of the 1990s in discussions between Marcus Radetzki and Marian Radetzki. A minor grant from the Trygg Hansa Research Foundation early in 2000 made it possible to start work in a small way. The result was a paper in Swedish, ‘Genetic Knowledge and Insurance’, by Marcus Radetzki, published in Nordisk Försäkringstidskrift (Scandinavian Insurance Quarterly) in 2001. The paper provides an overview of the subject area, and constituted a starting point for the present work. At a later stage during preparations, Niklas Juth was associated with the team, with the special task of covering the ethical aspects arising from the issues under investigation.

Work on the book was undertaken during the period September 2001–September 2002, with Studieförbundet Näringsliv och Samhälle (SNS – a Swedish think tank) as an administrative base, and a Swedish edition was published by SNS during 2002.

The manuscript is the result of close collaboration between the authors, but the work has been divided according to the authors' areas of competence. Chapters 1 and 8 have been jointly written by Marcus Radetzki and Marian Radetzki. Niklas Juth carried the main responsibility for chapters 2 and 7 and Marcus Radetzki for chapters 3 and 6, while Marian Radetzki wrote chapters 4 and 5.