Are we being too free with our genetic information? What if you started receiving targeted ads for Prozac for the depression risk revealed by your publicly accessible genome? As increasing amounts of genetic information is placed online, many researchers believe that guaranteeing donors’ privacy has become an impossible task.
In a paper published in Science, a team at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts used publicly available genetic information and an algorithm to identify some of the people who donated their DNA to HapMap’s successor, the 1000 Genomes Project.
Additional Resources:
- “Privacy loophole found in genetic databases,” Nature
- “Gene Privacy Protection Urged By Bioethics Panel,” Huffington Post
View the original article here: Matching names to genes: the end of genetic privacy?
