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The government in the United Kingdom wants to create a DNA database of the whole population, without the consent of the British people, warns campaigner
The new draft National Health Service constitution being developed by the Department of Health attempts, in the United Kingdom, is looking to remove people's right to be asked to give their fully-informed consent to take part in medical research. But is this really ethical, lawful and in the public interest? We do not think so. The background to this change is a proposal made by the Human Genomics Strategy Group, supported by the Welcome Trust Sanger Centre, to build a DNA database of everyone in the NHS.
The idea is that the whole genome - all the chemical letters in a person's DNA - of everybody in the population would be sequenced and stored as an attachment to their electronic medical record. People's medical data and genomes would also be stored in the cloud without their names and addresses, in order to allow patients' data to be automatically used for data-mining by commercial companies. Individuals could then be fed back computer-based predictions about their future risk of illness, online or via doctors.
http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/article/3012/british-nhs-moves-towards-patient-dna-database
The new draft National Health Service constitution being developed by the Department of Health attempts, in the United Kingdom, is looking to remove people's right to be asked to give their fully-informed consent to take part in medical research. But is this really ethical, lawful and in the public interest? We do not think so. The background to this change is a proposal made by the Human Genomics Strategy Group, supported by the Welcome Trust Sanger Centre, to build a DNA database of everyone in the NHS.
The idea is that the whole genome - all the chemical letters in a person's DNA - of everybody in the population would be sequenced and stored as an attachment to their electronic medical record. People's medical data and genomes would also be stored in the cloud without their names and addresses, in order to allow patients' data to be automatically used for data-mining by commercial companies. Individuals could then be fed back computer-based predictions about their future risk of illness, online or via doctors.
http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/article/3012/british-nhs-moves-towards-patient-dna-database