Anons: remember 23andMe? Zuck’s wife, Priscilla Chan’s thing. Also connects to Google’s Sergey Brin. They’re getting concernfag over privacy.

DNA Protection Pledges Fail to Address Main Concerns on Data Use

By Kristen V Brown, Bloomberg, 8/2/18

Genetic-testing companies that have decoded the DNA of millions pledged this week to prioritize consumer privacy and transparency with a set of industry guidelines governing users’ data.

But the new best practices introduced by 23andMe Inc., Ancestry and other industry leaders don’t address concerns about one of the most common ways that data is shared – with pharmaceutical giants, academics and others, often for a profit.

Just how lucrative the business of genetic testing is came into light last week when British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline Plc agreed to buy a $300 million stake in 23andMe to gain access to anonymized data with the hope of identifying new targets for drugs. That kind of data – stripped of identifying details and aggregated – isn’t strictly subject to new rules in the guidelines. That means consumers will still have little way to know when and how their information is combed for research.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-02/dna-protection-pledges-fail-to-address-main-concerns-on-data-use