Ancestry.com takes DNA ownership rights from customers and their relatives
By Joel Winston,
Medium
| 05. 17. 2017
A word to the wise: Read the complete terms of service.
Don’t use the AncestryDNA testing service without actually reading the Ancestry.com Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. According to these legal contracts, you still own your DNA, but so does Ancestry.com.
The family history website Ancestry.com is selling a new DNA testing service called AncestryDNA. But the DNA and genetic data that Ancestry.com collects may be used against “you or a genetic relative.” According to its privacy policies, Ancestry.com takes ownership of your DNA forever. Your ownership of your DNA, on the other hand, is limited in years.
It seems obvious that customers agree to this arrangement, since all of them must “click here to agree” to these terms. But, how many people really read those contacts before clicking to agree? And how many relatives of Ancestry.com customers are also reading?
There are three significant provisions in the AncestryDNA Privacy Policy and Terms of Service to consider on behalf of yourself and your genetic relatives: (1) the perpetual, royalty-free, world-wide license to use your DNA; (2) the warning that DNA...
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By Lori Andrews, Guest Contributor
| 06.18.2019
Editors note: This article was originally published on ourbodiesourselves.org and is reposted here with generous permission from Our Bodies Our Selves.
Six years ago, on June 13, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court in AMP v. Myriad took a great step forward for women’s health by unanimously ruling that human genes could not be patented. Now a bipartisan group of Senators and Representatives have released a bill that would allow companies to own our genes once again.
Article 1 of...
Six years ago, the question of who, if anyone, could patent a human gene was (we thought) settled by the Supreme Court in what is known as the Myriad decision. Their answer was, no one: human genes may not be patented because a “naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible.”
Unfortunately, a small but influential coalition in Congress is trying hard to overturn that decision.
A key part of the 2013 Supreme Court ruling was to...
By Jim Kozubek, Scientific American | 01.21.2019
A Chinese researcher recently disrupted the CCR5 gene, which builds a protein that acts as an entryway that HIV uses to gain entry to T-cells, allegedly creating the world’s first genetically engineered baby. Chinese officials moved swiftly to condemn the...
By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 02.07.2019
Officials at Stanford University have opened an investigation into what several high-profile faculty members knew about a Chinese effort to create gene-edited babies led by a onetime researcher at the California school, He Jiankui.
The investigation, according to people familiar...
