@carnage4life Privacy concerns are why I refuse to take a recreational genetic test. And unfortunately, my refusal is insufficient as the science has evolved that they can extrapolate from relatives who have taken the tests.

It’s a shame, since they are fascinating.

@carnage4life It’s not like no one saw this coming. We were warned for years that this could happen.

Probably coincidental, but disturbing that this would come out12 hours before the biggest attack on Israel in 50 years.

(The Ashkenazim are 35% of the population of Israel, and 75% of the world’s Jewish population.)

@carnage4life TBH, the right thing to do here is almost certainly to ban insurance companies, by law, from adjusting rates based on genetic condition.

Not that we shouldn't also protect privacy. But we've bent medical infosec around in ways counter to providing quality healthcare already (before ubiquitous cheap genetic testing) to avoid that outcome. Law can regulate markets; why not just ban the practice?

@carnage4life People are focusing on the bad that insurance companies can do with such information...

...but what if there were no insurance companies? What if (crazy idea) healthcare wasn't a profit-driven industry but instead something provided as a common good regardless of how good or bad your genes were?

This data has value only because of America's crazy and dystopic health insurance system.

@carnage4life

That’s only such an issue in the topsy-turvy USA world, where health and basic security must be bought. More likely future generations will look back (as we do looking on) with incredulity that only the wealthy could be well, that people would go to early graves with curable diseases because they couldn’t afford treatment, couldn’t change jobs without losing access to life-sustaining care, had to choose between food and insulin, and that seniors lived in abject poverty.

@carnage4life REALLY great analogy!

The problem is that a lot of people then make the leap that choosing to give your data to services like 23 And Me is inherently Wrong and Bad, when IMO at least it's a personal decision and just fine *so long as you're aware of the risks* like, oh, for instance, that your DNA data may well be flowing freely right now through innumerable dark markets :)

I say this because last year I was re-united with my biological father and half sister because we both signed up for 23 And Me. I am DEEPLY grateful to have them both in my life, and if I'd never signed up, I would never have the opportunity to know them!

Big risks, and sometimes, big rewards :) It's all a personal choice and CRAZY complicated.