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Scientists To Post Individuals' DNA Sequences To Web
isBandGeek() writes "With shocking disregard to their personal privacy, at least 10 people volunteered to release their entire medical records and DNA sequences in order to get their DNA decoded and analyzed. 'They include Steven Pinker, the prominent Harvard University psychologist and author, Esther Dyson, a trainee astronaut and Misha Angrist, an assistant professor at Duke University. They have each donated a piece of skin to the project at Harvard University and agreed to have the results posted on the internet. The three are among the first 10 volunteers in the Personal Genome Project, a study at Harvard University Medical School aimed at challenging the conventional wisdom that the secrets of our genes are best kept to ourselves. The goal of the project is to speed medical research by dispensing with the elaborate precautions traditionally taken to protect the privacy of human subjects."
Or, just possibly, they are rational individuals who lack the privacy fetish and extremism so common on Slashdot.
Our computers will individually combine your DNA codes and display an potential image of your offspring alongside each individual's profile image. For a small fee, you can also sign up for our DNAHarmony Pro package which allows you to select the most desired traits in your offspring and we will find you potential mates who have the best percentage chance of meeting your desired goals.
Mating with yourself, dubious mechanics of it aside, is virtually certain to produce non-viable offspring. If memory serves, duplicating any chromosome (ie throwing out one half of the pair and duplicating the other) has about a 1 in 3 chance of uncovering a recessive lethal allele. And you have a 50% chance, for each of the 22 autosomes, of getting such a duplication if your parental genomes are identical.
Not good odds, that.
(I realize that I may have treated that comment more seriously than it was intended)
sic transit gloria mundi
Well, that will give them moral superiority as they declare bankrupcy following a life-saving emergency surgery.
Or: This will give them moral superiority after they wisely emigrate to Europe where (in at least most countries) they will not have to deal with an insurance company refusing them medical insurance. Instead it all gets covered by national health care, pre-existing condition or not.
Leaving medical coverage to private companies that has no obligation to provide insurance to people not meeting certain health standards is inhumane and evil. At least if your country has enough money to support a proper health system for everyone.