

Taking a peek at the experts’ genetic secrets  - bootload
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/us/20gene.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

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ilamont
I read this, and the Wired article on PGP that came out earlier this year.

I think it's great that researchers want to improve access to genetic data
correlated with behavior, habits, illness and other traits, but I have to ask:
Why not just keep the subects' names obscured? It doesn't matter to most
researchers if they are looking at the results from subject #098352 vs. John
Smith, either as a single record or in aggregate. Tacking on the other part of
the project -- seeing how subjects' benefit/suffer from the release of their
personal information -- may be an interesting experiment on its own, but it
could have some very negative impacts on participants and skew the data toward
people with a different set of values and lifestyles than the population at
large.

