Do you have the right to share your DNA with someone else?
Most people would initially say yes.
In fact, most people would say that it is you, and only you, who has the right to share your DNA.
Certainly if you consider DNA as a medical test, this feels right. You have control over your medical records, and the information contained in them, so why not DNA?
Ah – but there is the crux of the matter: information.
Remember, DNA is information, and by definition, it is not unique to you, because 50% of your DNA information comes from your mother and 50% comes from your father.
So, when you give away your DNA information to 23andMe, or Ancestory.com, or – probably in the not to distant future – Google. Apple, and Amazon ( which all have great ability to correlate there pre-existing vast troves of information with any new information provided to them via Big Data and Machine Learning) you are also giving them 50% of your parents’ genetic code.
So tell me, do you have the right (at lest ethically, if not legally) to give these companies 50% of your parents’ genetic code?
Do your children have the right to give away 50% of your genetic code?
The interplay of new technologies in healthcare with ethics and law is complex.
Take you time thinking about it.