Google accused of biopiracy

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Google Genetic Database, "Biopiracy?" Individuals' data available???

I'm not sure, from this article or anything to which it links, exactly what "biopiracy" is being used to desribe, nor is it at all clear to me where and how Google, or its competitors, get or would get the genetic information they want to bank or are banking. While recognizing the need for business confidentiality, I beleive that this may well raise sufficiently substantial legal and privacy issues that somebody should investigate further and report in more detail.

If they plan to bank, or make available, any genetic information about identifiable individuals, without their fully informed, free and voluntary consent, this raises grave privacy issues that could damage individuals employment and credit prospects, relationships, and lives, dven before one takes into account the possiblility or clear likelihood of significant prejudicial errors in individual cases. It might sometimes save or improve some individuals' lives, but the individuals or their parents should be in control here, not some huge entity.

The person who said he thinks a company on the scale of Google,[Microsoft, ChoicePoint, one of the credit bureaus, the large insurance and financial conglomorates, a drug company, or some outfit based in Switzerland, India, China, or in th Arab world, or any of their high managerial agents, officers, or directors], have any real reason to fear five years in prison for violating the U.S. federal HIPPAA health privacy law, for example, with its loopholes bought and paid for, is living in a dream world. Has it been that long since Microsoft essentially got the United States Department of Justice to back down from its case against them for anti-competitive conduct against the Netscape browser? I can think of one federal approval of an anticompetitive acquisition in hte publishing industry that was demonstrably given in return for massive "political contributions" that any member of my former profession knows about. That small sample covers both political parties. For the money spent lobbying to weaken HIPPAA, for the benfit of drug and marketing companies that make big "campaign contributions"--in the record business they're called Payola--in return for desired votes in Congress, or to pass the most recent bankruptcy law, written by the credit card industry,rather than the better bill Congress had paid its own Review Commission to research and write, you can buy Congress, anyone likely to become President in 2008, both political parties, and a couple members of the world's oldest profession more honest than most of them. Either from ignorance or illicit money, they have yet to come up with effective legal deterrants of and protection from spyware, adware, spam, and a lot of child pornography, and you think the law is going to protect your personal genetic information from anyone of this size?

I hqve a proposed solution. Let's insist that, as a condition of permitting any such database or the sale of any individual's genetic data, the company's CEO, officers, directors, and primary shareholders' and their families' genetic and other data must be equally available to all of us. Wasn't it Google that cut off a certain technology publisher from information in retaliation after they Googled its CEO and published just what you or I could already get free on line? Turn about's fair play! There really is too much accessibility to some individual data already.

Posted by: Transaction7   Posted on: 03/30/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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