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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."
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.
The test isn't an entire DNA sequence. UCB isn't that rich. It just checks for the yes/no presence of 3 genes.
Someone had to do it.