Slashdot Mirror
Stanford, U.C. Berkeley Offer Students Genetic Testing
cappp writes with this snippet from Scientific American: "This week Berkeley will mail saliva sample kits to every incoming freshman and transfer student. Students can choose to use the kits to submit their DNA for genetic analysis, as part of an orientation program on the topic of personalized medicine. But U.C. Berkeley isn't the only university offering its students genetic testing. Stanford University's summer session started two weeks ago, including a class on personal genomics that gives medical and graduate students the chance to sequence their genotypes and study the results."
Every student sample dog saliva!!
crazy dynamite monkey
They can choose to participate or not. Seems like a non-story to me.
It would be more fun if they mailed them salvia sample kits.
Well, I can't possibly foresee any way that this could ever be abused.
far too lazy to create account, after all I should be working right now, anyway anonymous coward isn't ALL bad.
So I was thinking, There is no way I could avoid swabbing a goldfish and sending in my "DNA" swab I am sure at least one will do likewise
I mean, it's a bit paranoid, but imagine: "I'm sorry, but we've found you too liable to get cancer/something else undesirable. We're giving your seat in the class to this more guy who's more likely to be successful and not dead."
We'll need your SAT scores, two letters of recommendation, and a DNA sample.
It's not a privacy story yet, but when they start asking for DNA samples with your admission essays you can expect the discussion to heat up here.
Of course U.C. Berkeley would offer incoming students a Salvia sample kit.
submitting dna samples
usually to your fellow students
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Your test results will get leaked, they almost certainly won't be properly anonymized, and sooner or later it's likely the HMOs will get hold of them. If you have any genetically linked diseases, or predisposition to such, they will use this as an excuse to not insure you. Why take the chance? If you're a foreign student planning to return home later, it's probably ok.
Incoming freshmen should know that over 100,000 individuals were victims of a data breech at Berkeley's University Health Center in May 2009. The stolen information included gems such as SSNs, self-reported medical history, and information about doctor visits at the UHS -- all dating back to 1999. A more detailed report can be found here: http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/uc-berkeley-alerts-students-health-data-breach
(I was one of the affected individuals; as far as I know, the school never offered any form of compensation. In a perverse twist, however, my other insurance provider also suffered a data breech a few months later and offered me various credit monitoring and ID theft prevention services.)
For all of Berkeley's excellence, securing health records is apparently not one of them. In light of last year's massive data breech, I WOULD NOT voluntarily provide any genetic information to the school, even if the program administrators claim it's anonymous and secure. Who knows how long the information will be kept around or if the school's IT department will competently secure and protect it over the long run.
If you are not one of these incoming Stanford/Berkeley students, you can get your own testing done for about $500
This company is owned by Google founder, Sergey Brin's wife, Anne.
Now, are you sure you want to reveal our inner secrets, or would you prefer we go public with the fact you have a genetic propensity for engaging in foreign wars of adventure that only enrich China and Russia? ....
I work in Medical Genetics.
Privacy can fail at many levels - intake, transmission, copying.
Also, the genetic screening they do only is useful for certain things. Knowing you have certain genetic markers or gene sequences can be useful, but should never be revealed to insurers or other individuals.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Really do we need to be this obsessed with our personal health? Most people out there understand the basic tenets of healthy living such as good food and moderation but choose to ignore them. What is the expected result of yet more indoctrination?
love is just extroverted narcissism
Why is your urine container filled with white goop?
So imagine you get someone drunk and passed-out, swab their saliva, and submit it as your own.
Voila - you get a prediction of their future medical history!
Now that would open the door to some interesting conversations in the future with that person!
Guess this Cal-Stanfurd rivalry is really heating up!
Wouldn't it have been more cost effective to make the kits available for pickup to the students that wanted to participate. Instead of possibly confusing the issue by mailing the kits to "...every incoming freshman and transfer student."
That give me an idea for one of those companies that peddle stuff to people who don't know any better, like Star Registry or cryogenics - get people to pay you big bucks to save some DNA samples of yourself on the premise that someday when human cloning is perfected, they can bring you back to life!!! (results may vary).
I can see the commercials, some sad old guy hobbles off to his grave, cut to futuristic world and the same guy is wearing a jumpsuit and a big smile. Voiceover, "It's never too late, so come see what the future has in store for you".
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Oh Oh! I know this one!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IcEFOLJARI
Jim Meskimen's Cartoon Caption Contest
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
healthcare crops want this for the next 2-4 years be fore the rules about not taking sick people kick in.
The applications of planted evidence at a crime scene are relatively straight forward, and as CSI types learn their craft better, false-positives will be discounted. But "kitchen table genetics" is approaching very quickly. Students need to be aware of these future issues and applications. Then why not have a mandatory 1 Unit Health Genetics class for incoming freshmen/women where they do their on analysis and the data is never stored on campus for any reason?
PseudoQuote:
" /PseudoQuote
Your Rights Online: Berkeley Says College Attendees' Information Was Leaked
Posted by Someone on Thursday September 08, @03:26PM
from the hopefully-no-dropped-rows-on-the-grade report dept.
[ Security ]
NoelCoward writes "Thousands of people got a nasty e-mail this morning from Berkely. The comllege was warning people that its attendee DNA database for its semester 2010 event was hacked. If it's not embarrassing enough for a college to get hacked, the e-mail also went out to people who didn't register and didn't attend the school. That raises questions about exactly what database was pried open and how bad the damage is. Berkeley's e-mail said the hole was quickly closed and only goatse-type humor was exposed."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
It looks like the students get to retrieve "their own" results, keyed by the barcode thingie. I had to put "their own" in quotes, because certain possibilities present themselves.
I think they are just looking to isolate the gene that turns people into hippies ;-)
Actually, I grew up there and it has changed a lot. You have to be a pretty rich hippie to afford Berkeley these days....
Too late
I think there's a big difference between what Berkeley's doing and what Stanford's doing.
At Stanford, seeing as how it's a graduate level class, the students understand that the purpose is to explore the implications of genetic testing for this kind of application (not unlike a graduate-level MIT class I read about some years ago about wearable computing where the purpose was to explore how wearable computing might affect our lives.) It doesn't bother me too much that they do this, so long as the institutional review board was consulted (if it was appropriate to do so.)
At Berkeley, on the other hand, the Freshman orientation program treats this as a more or less settled societal issue.
how are the samples collected? could you submit another person's DNA and snoop/harass them?
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
When I was in college, it wasn't a good night out unless I swapped saliva with a coed.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
...here's the part I find funny; the article says the students who participate will be able to sequence their own dna. In a semester? For fun? If your going into this field obviously dna sequencing is a very important part of it; but damn! It Is BORING. The genetic language is made up of FOUR (4) letters, and the sentences string on and one for infinity and a day! Think about translating the same joke from one language to another, over and over again, but with a slightly different punchline each time. Over, and over, and over, for days... and then, since its YOUR joke, once in a while you might find a variation that could kill you. Fun. Fun, fun, fun.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Interesting story how students were asked to submit to "posture photos" which were used for eugenics studies. This just reeks of potential abuse regardless of the promise they make.
http://tafkac.org/collegiate/ivy_league_nude_photos.html
The only news here is that Stanford is also doing it. The Berkeley article was posted already.
The science on this is too late for me and my siblings in the college admission process. But when this article coming out, linking Formosan aboriginals with Australian aboriginals genetically, we tested for the marker used and found it.
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0030247;jsessionid=4B83F3BC07FF90657C9C95A5ABCCBE02.ambra01
"Traces of Archaic Mitochondrial Lineages Persist in Austronesian-Speaking Formosan Populations"
Affirmative action in it's currently form, it's pretty tough on Taiwanese-American who speak Han languages. However, Pacific Islanders, such as those related to Australian aboriginals, get a boost. And we can back it up with science, now, for the next generation. As those claims are only to become more popular, I can see schools eventually conducting their own genetic tests.
cheap gucci sale
http://www.gucciusaoutlet.net/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=75&zenid=aa7cf3c1c03ba16b9ac00c8cd2a23ef2
I would like to point out that this is the same medical system that lost a bunch of student's social security numbers (including mine) not that long ago. I don't know if I'd trust them with my DNA as well.