Man Open Sources His Genetic Data

An anonymous reader writes "Manu Sporny, founder and CEO of Digital Bazaar, has decided to use GitHub to store a very interesting project. Rather than a piece of software, he is listing his own genetic data as an open source project. He has released all his rights to the data and made around 1 million of his genetic markers public domain. As to why he decided to do what many may feel is a risky sharing of data so personal and unique to himself, Manu explains: 'I've thought long and hard about each of those questions and the many more that you ask yourself before publishing this sort of personal data. There are large privacy implications in doing this. However, speaking solely for myself, I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.' Manu hasn't gone into great detail as to his thought processes yet, but promises to on his blog at a later date."

Comments

Here's what he's doing

[gman003]

While I can't actually speak for him, I have a pretty good guess at what he's doing.

He's establishing his DNA as "prior art".

Anyone who tries to patent some element of DNA (and there's plenty who will try to) now has a rather significant obstacle to overcome, especially since at least 99% of DNA is the same between people.

Re:Long term, not a good idea...

[interkin3tic]

You jest, but HeLa cells have been around for about 60 years. They're an immortal line of cancer cells taken from a woman named Henrietta Lacks. HeLa cells have been used in numerous labs around the world, per mass, there is more HeLa than there ever was Henrietta Lacks. I don't think anyone would have ever expected that at the time.

Then again, Lacks never gave consent for the cells to be used, whereas this guy chose to make this data available.