Genome hacking
A recent article in New Scientist shows just how easy it is to get hold of a person’s DNA and find out their genetic secrets: criminal tendencies, suceptibility to drug addiction, early-onset Alzhiemer’s disease, high cancer risk, love of chocolate and bad movies…and so on. OK I am exagerrating a bit on what we can find out from looking at your genome, but it is the genes for these characterisitcs (except the last example) that people are starting to find and unravel when it comes to how they influence who we are. The New Scientist article (28 March 2009, No. 2701, p. 6-9) highlighted that a dcoument shredder is no longer adequate protection against sensitive personal information. It highlights the need for a serious think about how we protect individuals against this invasion of privacy and that we need to think about this now becasue although the information we can glean from our genes at the moment is not definitive and the error bars are large, technology is moving fast and it be will sooner rather than later that genetic information of significance can be revealed. A point only alluded to in the New Scientist article, though, is what all this genetic understanding will do for the individual themselves. Would you want to know your liklihood of getting any number of diseases, if you have criminal tendencies, lousy immunse system or sporting prowess. Having this information also places a burden on the individual re: deciding who else should have this knowledge. Should you alert family members of a possible genetic flaw running through the family, could anyone else be harmed by having or not having this information. Again, there are privacy issues about who should have access to such information and how to prevent unauthorised access, but then their is also the potential personal trauma of having to deal with this knowledge, such as the New Scientist reporter who had a short-lived scare when one of the genetic tests suggested he was at risk of developing Alzhiemer’s disease. What if such tests become mandatory at birth, or even as part of a screening process for embryos? If this does happen, what things should be part of a mandatory screening, if any?
This is an area that will doubtless prove an ethical and political quagmire but one that the public should be thinking about and discussing now before the technology arrives.
More discussion on this can be found at Genetic Futures Blog http://scienceblogs.com/geneticfuture/2009/03/stealing_a_genome_surreptitiou.php
Jason Major
Manager
GNTIS – www.gntis.edu.au
