User:Danstrib/Genetic privacy

This article is a sandbox for updating the Wikipedia article Genetic privacy

Genetic privacy involves the concept of personal privacy concerning the storing, repurposing, provision to third parties, and displaying of information pertaining to one's genetic information. This concept also encompasses privacy regarding the ability to identify a specific individual by their genetic sequence, and the potential to gain information on specific characteristics about that person via portions of their genetic information, such as their propensity for disease or their immediate or distant ancestry.

With the public release of genome sequence information of participants in large-scale research studies, questions regarding participant privacy have been raised. In some cases, it has been shown that it is possible to identify previously anonymous participants from large-scale genetic studies that released gene sequence information.

Legal regulations, such as the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA) in the United States have been created to mandate that an individual's genomic sequence information cannot be requested or used as a basis for genetic discrimination by employers or health insurance providers, though this protection does not extend to other forms of insurance such as life insurance.

Significance of genetic information
In the majority of cases, an individual's genetic sequence is considered unique to that individual. One notable exception to this rule in humans is the case of identical twins, who have essentially identical genome sequences at birth. In the remainder of cases, one's genetic fingerprint considered specific to a particular person and is regularly used in the identification of individuals in the case of establishing innocence or guilt in legal proceedings via DNA profiling. Specific sequences in one's genetic code, known as alleles, have been shown to have strong predictive effects in the occurrences of diseases, such as the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutant genes in Breast Cancer and Ovarian Cancer, or the eFAD gene in Early-Onset Alzheimer's Disease. Additionally, gene sequences are passed down with a regular pattern of inheritance between generations, and can therefore reveal one's ancestry via genealogical DNA testing. Additionally with knowledge of the sequence of one's biological relatives, traits can be compared that allow relationships between individuals, or the lack thereof, to be determined, as is often done in DNA paternity testing. As such, one's genetic code can be used to infer many characteristics about an individual, including many potentially sensitive subjects such as:


 * Parentage / Non-paternity
 * Consanguinity
 * Adoptive Status
 * Ancestry
 * Propensity for Disease
 * Predicted Physical Characteristics