Weapons or Cures?
When genetic privacy clashes with medical progress
The campaign party is going smoothly: guests mingling, drinks flowing, the candidate charming donors with subtle jokes. A short, mousy man slips away unnoticed, a used fork tucked into his jacket. The next morning, the candidate wakes up to a frantic call from her assistant. “Your opponents say you can’t be president because you’ll be going senile soon! Someone sequenced your genome and found an Alzheimer’s gene.”
This story hasn’t been in the news — yet. But it’s already plausible. The technology for genetic sequencing and interpretation is advancing so rapidly that scientists and society haven’t had time to process the implications. A decade ago, sequencing a single person’s genome — all of his or her DNA — cost ten million dollars and months of work. Today, it costs just a thousand dollars to get results in hours, with costs expected to drop again in a few years. Political scandals aren’t outside the realm of possibility, but neither are personalized disease treatment plans and cures. It remains unclear whether researchers can take advantage of genetic data’s benefits without unleashing potential harm or reinventing privacy principles.
