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I know a guy who works in IT at Decode that works with human genetics. They have a strict policy on fully encrypted disks, passwords on everything etc... The founder Kari Stefansson was really annoyed because of all this, but like a typical professor he loses his laptop every few months so good thing there's a double encryption.

If you see a big performance hit you should look at more hardware rather than resisting the protection.

IMHO confidential data should be encrypted! How often do we see news on slashdot where people lose unencrypted laptops with highly confidential data. Encryption should be mandatory regardless of the performance hit when dealing with confidential data. It's like going to a $7 hooker without using a condom and risk not getting an STD.

This is not the first time this has happened.

A lot of private firms have identified disease susceptibility genes. There is a company in Iceland called 'deCode' - http://www.decode.com/ which has been doing this stuff for many years now, exploiting the fact the iceland has a relatively stable and homogenous genetic population. They have genetic data available for more than 25% of the population of Iceland and they have innumerable papers and free online resources.

Not to mention the federal govt. has been doing this forever now and 'Human Genome Project' and 'Hapmap project' are well known.

Iceland has stated that it's going to go to all hydrogen, and sell polution credits under the Kyoto treaty.


Hmm...as an Icelander, I'm rather puzzled by these ideas you have of my country. There's been talk for ages about making Iceland hydrogen-only but it's not going to happen for a long, long time. Icelanders love their big, over-powered jeeps for cruising the highlands. We have more automobiles per capita than any other nation in the world.

Between that and their incredibly profitable gene pool, they'll be per-capita, the wealthiest nation in the world soon enough.

Our "profitable" gene pool.....I suppose you're referring to DeCODE Genetics , the guys that are building the database of medical records. Well, they'll be bankrupt in a few years if they're lucky, otherwise much, much sooner.

As for "wealthiest nation in the world...", with our wonderfully Americanized economy, the majority of wealth in Iceland has a tendency to go into the pockets of a select elite. In any case, my experience indicates that the more money people have here, the higher the taxes and higher pricing.

I wish I could be an optimist....:(

I think there are times when giving up some of our privacy can have great benefit. You probably heard the famous story of the Iceland thing: In the country of Iceland, they agreed to have their genetic codes gone (into) and they tracked all this.

This is the president of USA's technical advisor? We Icelanders had our medical records submitted into a database via an opt-out scheme, not our genetic codes! In any case, I was and still am bitterly opposed to what deCODE is doing, and I've had my record and that of my family removed from the database.

He came up with a very bad example: People's personal information used for the profit of corporations.

Technically, I think the samples belongs the one collecting them. What these companies buy is the exlusive cooperation with public healt authorities. Presumably, Jonah donates blood to a company which also collects genealogy info, it would all be in order. However, without clinical records, this information will no be so valuable.

The deal seems good to me. A crucial fact is that Autogen is setting up a facility in Tonga, instead of shipping all the samples to Australia.
Lars
__

The Bible is true! So there!

In more ways that we are just beginning to know about.

Y-Chromosome research is proving to be much more illuminating than mitochondrial DNA that threw science for a loop in the late 80's, suggesting that we all have a single female ancestor from Africa 200,000 years ago.

Cohen or Kohen as a Jewish surname comes from "priest", as the priesthood from Moses was inherited father-to-son. Research has shown that Cohens typically have Y-chromosome markers that just don't show up in members of the Jewish population at large.

But here's the kicker. The Lemba in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa have long maintained that they were descended from Northern ancestors, priests and tradeworkers, who sailed South through the Indian Ocean. Most of the world had not believed them, but DNA tests of their Y-chromosomes show them to contain the same markers as Cohens!

On the opposite site of the globe...
I wonder what researchers are currently making out of deCODE's Book of Icelanders. I understand that access is free for locals. Being an island without much immigration, they must have a small, but very interesting gene pool.