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This seems like corporate whitewashing of all the insidious things they will actually sell user data for. Like “yeah we sell user data but only so we can make a cure for cancer” meanwhile they are selling it to organizations that are building biometric monitoring databases straight out of Minority Report.
They’ll never make a cure for cancer. Illness and death are far more profitable.
This entire conspiracy theory falls apart once you realize there is more than one group trying to cure cancer, and have cured multiple cancers, as curing cancer is vastly more profitable than treating it.
Once your cancer is cured, you no longer need treatment, and you won’t seek treatment if there’s a cure.
Cancer cures (and eventually, vaccinations) are an arms race, and only efficacy matters
Companies burn food to ensure scarcity and protect their bottom line.
We’re stupid
Except companies aren’t the ones curing cancer, academics are… Companies will gladly use the free R&D, productize, and make a quick profit.
The CEO just really likes the taste (and especially the structure) of spit.
I can’t unread this. Good job sir.
Put all the spit-focusd onlyfans out of buisness.
HATE
Oh come one, we all knew this right? I spit in the tube knowing they’d use it for drugs, sale or some other research shit. They also feel like they made this pretty clear throughoit the process that they’d use your spittle for science.
That’s probably the best case scenario honestly. They use our saliva and cure cancer. That’s a great thing for humanity.
The other applications range from questionable to dystopian… Making a database of everyone’s DNA for law enforcement, data leaks and dark-web selling your DNA sequences, insurance buying the data to limit coverage after a claim, forensic genealogy as a way to catch criminals, using forensic genealogy to predict future offenders, targeted bio weapons, future tech like making clones of people, manufacturing fake evidence to plant, using genetic info to target certain types of people (race, gender, what if sexuality is genetic)
One things missing with most of the those: profits. I’d be more worried about bad actors stealing the DNA data and using it for all those. The businesses will keep within regulations to keep the profits rolling in without getting shutdown.
The business will gladly sell to the alphabet boys. And hackers will definitely get the data from poor security.
I’m pretty sure they were upfront about their intended use to help research personalized medication. This isn’t some conspiracy.
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Yeah, from two years ago and it wasn’t even surprising then.
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They do, there is a wide range of genetic tests done on newborns. Mostly looking for rare genetic diseases that need treatment from birth. https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Newborn-Genetic-Screening
All children born in Sweden after 1975 have blood samples stored in a biobank. A bit scary tbh.
They got the idea from Svalbard. In case of global catastrophe.
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Wow! It’s something nobody could have ever guessed!
Everyone who thinks this is legitimately bad. I ask, what do you think of AI art data sets? Sometimes, to make something new you have to have mass amount of data to start with.
I think people who paid to have a service, checked a box for their sample to be used for research, and the research is to cure disease, have significantly lower reason to be upset than an artist who used Twitter to upload their work and had said work used as a data set to train a product that will try to make their career even MORE financially immposible.
Boohoo. You signed up for a good cause. Get over it.
Here’s the difference, an artist can make more art. You cannot change your DNA. If someone steals some of your art it’s not the end of the world. You can make more. If someone has your DNA, you can’t change it. Once its out there that’s it. More over having someone’s DNA can give you significant insight into into just the person whose DNA you have but also their parents and their children.
Once its out there that’s it.
But the subject put it out themslevss. More over, they paid for it be used. No one was tricked, captured or coerced in to giving their DNA.
As opposed to an artist who is promoting themselves and their craft, used without their knowledge to replicate their work.
By biological father was an anonymous sperm donor before the technology to sequence a person’s DNA for under 10 billion dollars was a thing. They did not give their DNA to ancestry. Their sister did, having no clue that her brother had donated. Yet ancestry has matched her to several nieces and nephews, outing her brother’s history to his sister and the children who were never supposed to have access to that info. It’s not just your own information.
Similarly, one of my half siblings suddenly found out that his dad wasn’t his birth dad.
Anyways, he happens to be cool with the fact that he suddenly had contact with offspring who weren’t supposed to know who he was.
But our DNA is interconnected. It doesn’t just belong to one person.
Happier version of your story:
My dad an I both did 23 and Me. He made sure I knew he had done sperm donation before I met my mother just in case something came up. Well, it did! I have two half siblings from his donations! I think it’s cool, and I think he’s happy to know he helped two families have a child.
I have a lot of half-siblings. One set of two, one set of 3 (I’ve only met the oldest), one only child, there’s me and my two full siblings, and the donor’s actual child. There’s more out there. Another we matched with their child, but I don’t think we even know their name. Been pretty cool meeting all of them and the donor. Its actually been a happy experience, but one certain people had no choice in making.
It’s interconnected, sure, but I think you’d have an uphill battle that it doesn’t belong to that person.
I mostly agree, except both my parents did it so they more or less have my DNA without my consent. They sure might not have the exact combination that I received from them but it’s more than I’m comfortable with.
Though the amount of possible permutations combined with epigenetic triggers you’ve activated makes it practically impossible to guess which combination you have.
Yes but it makes it significantly easier to guess
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This isn’t even new. Why are we posting things from over two years ago and treating it like some sort of revelation?
kinda inevitable. with as fast as dna can be sequenced now… we are publicly broadcasting this information. how can we realistically protect something we broadcast. its kinda like having your photo taken in public. at some point, its gunna happen.
do you have an expectation of privacy on data you publicly broadcast 24/7 everywhere all the time? i dont think so. i think its silly to try.
its only a matter a time before most of the world is captured into a continually aggregated genetic database of unique individuals which will inevitably all link back together.
are there going to be bad actors? yep. lets prosecute those mofos, but this kind of aggregations is far from evil or wrong or… stoppable.
Holy shit, GATTACA was supposed to be a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual!
i call this the ‘tipper gore affect’. aka, ‘you see what you want to see’
im kinda hopin we dont go down the full-on genetic editing path as they did in the movie… maybe just hardcore embryo defect filtering for know diseases/errors
It’s not even the genetic editing that was the biggest issue, IMO. It was the pervasive surveillance and discrimination that was even worse.
yep, good point. it would be nice to solve for those issues before theyre applicable to dna. humans still suck in a lot of ways
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I never understood the appeal of the business in the first place. Why would you care who your great great great grandpa was? I don’t even care who my Grandpa was.
It’s commonly used by Adoptees to find their biological family. This can be important for a few reasons, including finally getting accurate family health history.
i had a coworker from my last job find his birth mother through one of these dna websites. the happiness he had on his face when he came back after finally meeting his biological family made me think about 1) how fortunate I am and 2) how many people have used these services to connect to long lost family members.
the good outweighs the bad for now, imo.
No question. It took me 6 years and thousands of hours to find mine (distant matches only, and birth father was dead, and birth mother was also adopted, which added an extra 2 years to the search). If it wasn’t for DNA I would never have located her though.
Why would you care who your great great great grandpa was?
I was able to find out that my great grandfather was adopted, and meet a whole new wing of my family. I didn’t even do the test, my aunt did.
About 10 years ago they provided medical data from the samples. I used 23 And Me too confirm that a health problem I’d recently been diagnosed with was hereditary. At the time I remember being asked if my sample could be used to aid the type of research the OP talks about and I agreed to it.
A couple of years ago, I think 23 And Me was bought out by Virgin Healthcare, at that point I asked them to destroy all my data was worried about it being used to increase the cost of or preclude health insurance.
Called it.
Can you show us where?
Fuck yeah we did!
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No shit sherlock
I bought a pair of them. The lady and I thought it over for years and finally ended up shit-canning them. It just didn’t feel right.
