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.
Well, I can't possibly foresee any way that this could ever be abused.
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.
"Oh, your credentials are excellent; but I'm afraid your mortality profile is not what we are looking for. The best alumni donors live long successful lives, then die relatively swiftly, leaving plenty for a generous bequest. The ones that die young and tragically we admit strategically, for their potential artistic value; but the ones that are likely to linger for years under ever costlier treatments just aren't worth it."
"Though, on the other hand... I like you kid, you seem like the right sort, not really your fault that you'll probably die slowly of something from 90 to 97. Re-apply, with an essay that has a bit more stoicism and enthusiasm for the sort of motorcycles that you'll be able to afford just as your reflexes are starting to deteriorate, and I'll talk to some people I know..."
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
of course when they see 94 chromosomes, they'll pick up on it right away, but a Stanford student would already know that.
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.
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! --
On the other hand, if you're really that likely to get cancer and die during the 4 month course I think that would be pretty important information to know about. In fact, personally I would call getting that information but missing out on the class a net win. As long as they don't start using genome studies to test for intelligence, aggression, or work ethic I honestly think that the right laws and regulations can control the situation.
Which eventually will be rolled into a new Google service called "G-nome". :)
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
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!
Just because someone eats well, is active, and generally leads a healthy life doesn't mean there isn't something wrong, especially when it comes to women (hear me out). Because women are XX, a flaw in one of those may not ever show up or be noticed, but it could be passed on to a male child. Testing can reveal this problem before it happens. I'm not saying schools, jobs, or insurance should require this type of testing, but in our case, I wish we'd known beforehand.
That's always puzzled me, even if you do manage to transform the memories, all you get is a situation like the 6th day. A clone that has your memories, but isn't really you.
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.
You don't think I'm sending those p3nis enlargement emails to everyone, do you?
Do we need a "Godwin" variant for Gattaca references every time genetics are mentioned? "Dude! You just Gatted the thread!"
Apparently we do. Of course, the paranoid citation of science fiction as an objection to actual science goes at least back to Frankenstein, but Gattaca really seems to have taken on that role in the modern discussion of genetic issues. Jurassic Park often gets thrown in as a lagniappe.
Just in case this isn't clear to everybody: Frankenstein, Jurassic Park, and Gattaca were all fiction. They're stories. They're made up. They didn't really happen. At least Hitler and the Nazis actually existed ...
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.