all they ever wanted was a database to sell. we keep falling for the same game....
this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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I tried telling my family this from the jump but half of them have used these services. Now me and all their descendants are fucked over because they just had to be idiots. It's extra stupid because we already have our genealogy on both sides going back to like 1500s.
I made the mistake of having them sequence my DNA before the first Big Pharma deal with GSK, which took a lot of people by surprise. I’ve since made a point of feeding them as much disinformation as possible every time I’m on their site.
Be quite amusing if we could poison their well by persuading a great many people to send in samples from other life forms.
Probably easier, cheaper & faster to make their data unusable via other means though.
It is fairly easy to differenciate DNA samples from different species and exclude them. Since it has always been an issue to have contamination by foreign DNA (bacterias, fungus, virus, plancton, fauna and flora of all sorts, etc.), tools/methods/protocols are specifically made to quickly separate out (amplify the DNA we are interested in) from whatever is not to focus of the current study.
Moreover, a random anonymous sample without associated information can quickly be analysed and compared against large libraries of genome datasets/maps to ascertain and corroborate what it is from, closest species, even family trees of related inviduals and most importantly get an overview of multiple phenotype of interest.
From the day the full human genome map had been declared complete in 2003 (at 85% of the genome), research has only accelerated in improving the map while understanding the various functions of many different parts of our DNA.
So you're saying we need to edit our DNA before sending it in!
CRISPR to the rescue!
I am guessing this is only for the people who opted in to having their data shared for research.
It is exactly that.
Perhaps. “Research” was initially pitched as academic and non-profit research, which I was happy to help. Then selling my data to a for-profit with no warning was definitely Not Cool.
Almost all research is done by companies. New advances in science cost money, they need funding. Some of this funding comes from charities, but the majority comes from companies that hope to benefit in some way.
Oh man i cant wait to say i told you so to family members
Were they of the idea that when you tick the "my data can be used anonymously for research" box it meant that their data WOULDN'T be used anonymously for research?
The only way I'm ever getting sequenced is if the machine is in front of me, is an open-source design or can be destroyed afterwards, and I get the only copy on my own encrypted drive. Or it's done without my consent. Probably the latter the way things are going.
Only way I'm doing it is if I assembled the machine from a kit and got to inspect the source code myself.
Do you realize that you don't need to volunteer at all? Do you know that there was a rape and murder case that was proven using data from a similar (same?) company? They found a bunch of people with DNA similar to that from the rape kit and went on to find their common relative.
The story above may sound good. But it won't be too hard for medical insurance companies to deduce your approximate genetic profile based on the samples submitted by your relatives.
Even worse, it doesn't take a lot of genetic material these days to profile you. The PCR technique (the same used for Covid-19 screening) can amplify samples. You may have submitted a blood sample at some point in the last few years. How would you know if a tiny bit of that was siphoned off to create an exact genetic profile of yours?
Yeah. That's kind of what I was getting at with the "without my consent" part.
Different company. There's a site called Gedmatch where you can upload your file and one of the feature you can choose to use is to allow your file be used to identify does or solve serious crimes. Nobody is doing this secretly.
People are getting very confused here. You can allow your anonymised data to be used for research. This is not new whatsoever and it's done by consent.
What IS new is that a company (GSK) are about to start using this data. Data that's publicly used already. This may help them to develop some new treatments.
This is only if you opted into research. And I am actually happy this is happening. If only one person is helped by research outcomes or medications developed from this, I am happy. I don't care if 23andMe gets rich from it or not.