From Suspects to the Spitterati: A collision of power, profit, and privacy
By Jessica Cussins
| 06. 27. 2013
DNA is the ultimate big-data dream. It can shed light on our health, ancestry, and family members. It can be used to solve crimes and exonerate the innocent, investigate diseases and treatments, advance basic scientific knowledge, and reveal certain aspects of our histories and potential futures.
But as genetic data is collected and used in increasingly varied contexts, issues of privacy, rights, access, justice, and innovation are poised to collide – and to intersect our lives in both positive and negative ways. The questions raised by this coming collision won’t be answered immediately, but we need to start now to tease out their complexities.
Many suitors are lining up to exploit the explosion of genetic information.
- Local police agencies are creating their own databases – some call them “rogue” databases – and the Supreme Court recently determined that state and federal authorities can take DNA from people arrested (pre-conviction) for serious crimes.
- Companies are rushing to patent genetic findings, even when such claims are absurd (and now, at least partially, ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court).
- Marketing and advertising gurus...
Related Articles
By Tristan Manalac, BioSpace | 04.02.2024
Verve Therapeutics has suspended enrollment in the Phase Ib Heart-1 study evaluating its lead gene editing program VERVE-101 following a serious adverse event, the company announced Tuesday.
A patient, who received a 0.45-mg/kg dose of VERVE-101, developed a grade 3...
By Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres, First Monday | 04.14.2024
The stated goal of many organizations in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) is to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), an imagined system with more intelligence than anything we have ever seen. Without seriously questioning whether such a system can...
By Harold Brubaker, The Philadelphia Inquirer | 04.04.2024
Acompany started by University of Pennsylvania scientist Jim Wilson has received FDA approval to test a form of gene editing in infants for the first time in the United States, the company said Thursday.
The Plymouth Meeting company, iECURE, is...
By Judith Levine, The Intercept | 04.04.2024
WHEN THE ALABAMA Supreme Court ruled that fertilized embryos were “extrauterine children,” it did more than imperil the future of in vitro fertilization in Alabama and, potentially, the U.S. The ruling, on the claimed “wrongful death” of frozen embryos...