Safety or invasion of privacy.

Its also worth noting that with medical genetic testing only data relevant to your diagnosis is taken out and interpreted. If that little sliver of data throws up any "consequential findings" not relevant to your diagnosis there are protocols for that....

But you pay a commercial company to pluck out some ancestry data, you dont have the same safeguards about the rest

Sorry Jalima, only just seen your post. The national DNA database is fed by the police from the samples that they take, see www.parliament.uk/documents/post/postpn258.pdf If Ancestry is selling off data to the US, I am sure GCHQ will get their hands on it!

Since the database is hosted on a gov.uk website, government departments will have access to it. If you apply for a DBS check, you will find that your passport, national insurance and driving licence details are all linked up now in one profile. The only records that aren't are your medical records, but there is a movement to gain access to those. I was warned that the police have been given access to an East Anglian hospital to trawl patient records looking for domestic abuse victims to encourage them to come forward. Bad enough, but if they were tempted to look for drug users etc while they were in there?

I don't trust this Government with much, but at the moment I do trust them not to start profiling people by race or religion. However if the majority of MPs were to be replaced.....

When you have genetic testing with the NHS your data is kept within the highest security imaginable. There are security measures at every step. Your raw data is kept in a Different geographical location to your identity data and can only be combined with your interpreted data in a 3rd location.

So it is obviously high risk data to be floating about....yet people are giving it away for the "fun" of getting back some poorly interpreted geniology info.....

See DNA is like statistics

1. It can be poorly obtained in the first place affecting the end result

2. Both offer raw data not "answers". Both need to be analysed to provide usable information. As with stats, we know that people can lie with statistics by making the data appear to prove their point, so they can then use it as justification for their end goal.

Say... an insurer wanted to up premiums for ppl with risk of heart disease. Say (plucking this out of thin air) 40 genes are known to be involved in heart disease.
Say that everyone has at least 20 of them, but in genetics its more to do with combinations rather than individual genes so having just 20 of them actually puts you in the lowest risk group.

But. A dodgy firm may offer to sell your insurer the names they have of their clients who have any genes that contribute to heart disease risk... they can give your name even if you are acutally low risk! See?

Whereas a better interpretation would be anyone with 35-40 of them in the absence of lifestyle factors, or > 25 of them with 2 or more lifestyle factors.

You have only 20 which by themselves makes you as low risk as possible. You dont smoke and are a healthy weight. Your data has been sold and is now being marketed onwards as you being a person with "genes that contibute to heart disease". Your insurer buys it. Your premium goes up.

Jalimall once you publish data online it is never really private, regardless of your privacy settings. And you can never permanently delete it either.

We're all assuming that the DNA records & matching would be infallible.
It's just possible there could be errors while everyone shouts "You are guilty. DNA says so!"

This is apparently an argument against jury trials as tv has led people to believe that forensics = proof, rather than a tool open to interpretation.

This is also an issue with commercial DNA companies, they can interpret your DNA to make it suit the buyer, so say for example they want to profile people who have a "significant likelihood of being jewish" the raw DNA data can be made to fit that brief if they want it to IYKWIM .

If insurance companies are paying then to find "high risk" people who should pay higher premiums, and they have a quota to meet, they will find X amt of high risk people in their raw data by adjusting the parameters to suit themselves

notanan it would be advisable to make their family tree private, if they will.
Usually the names of anyone living is not shown - but easy to find out.

My kids now have no choice, their family DNA (combined with the family trees their GPs have published online with their names on it) is going to the highest bidder and who knows how it will be used in future!

In past wars people have escaped persecution by hiding their ancestry/changing names etc. DHs own family did so a couple of generations back you would think they would know better than to take away DDs option to ever hide their background in the future!

Im really quite annoyed that both sets of my childrens GPs have gone and done unsecure dodgy commercial ancestry DNA testing without any discussion or consideration about how that could potentially impact my children's privacy and safety in the future. They say it is "their choice" but they are not the ones who will be living with the consequences.

Yes, a friend of mine is a Street Pastor.

I didn't realise about the sharing of the DNA results with the FBI

It would be extremely rare for that to happen FarNorth and other evidence could disprove that anyway.

I wonder if people realise that a company who provide your ancestry when you send them a DNA sample are sharing their records with the FBI in the US? What America does today....
As far as young women and men getting drunk and getting home there is an organisation called Street Pastors who actively help look after such people. One of the things I was told and thought quite shocking was the fact that some taxi drivers will not pick up these people because they are often sick in their cab. So if someone rings their family they may have already tried other methods of getting home and be desperate

We're all assuming that the DNA records & matching would be infallible.
It's just possible there could be errors while everyone shouts "You are guilty. DNA says so!"

"People" may do that by choice. Others, such as myself, choose not to do so and also object to a national database.

Surely its just as risky to send off for a dna thingy on ancestry or similar sites?
MissA indeed.

People blithely send off their DNA for profiling to such companies which then keep them on a database and who knows how secure that information is - but are wary of having their profile on a national database with all the controls that entails!

Besides DNA is a tool not a magic wand.

Chipping could make paranoid manic mental health episodes worse and cause people to harm themselves. Removable chips e.g. bands, well... as a teen that would have been sitting on my besties bunk bed while we snuck out elsewhere....

Also as for people not commiting crimes.. plenty of people who commit crimes either want to be caught or dont care if theyre caught. As if someone coming down from drugs is going to stop and go "better not rob that house for money for my next fix, Im chipped/DNA profiled"

I wonder if there will come a time when DNA is taken and kept on record at birth. It's a creepy thought, but I bet the crime rate would plummet if everyone knew that they could be easily connected to a crime scene.

No it wouldnt. "DNA fraud" would develop just as faking fingerprints did *its now relatively easy to fake someone elses finger print) and most crime scenes dont have any usable conclusive DNA at them anyway!

When my brother was in mental health crisis and was missing..it was dreadful not knowing if he was alive or not. The police were both kind and thorough. He was located alive.
I think that microchipping people is inappropriate. Whilst many people do go awol deliberately or otherwise the nimbers do not warrant that solution. Sledgehammer/ nut

I was taught that you make a ship sturdy enough and with all the proper equipment to navigate the seas of life. If you do your job well, the ship will not sink and will happily carry others

Well that’s a sad analogy. Ships can and do sink, no matter how well made and equipped. Would you then ignore their distress calls as did the captain of the Californian and let them sink without offering help?

That seems a sensible idea to me.

I wonder if there will come a time when DNA is taken and kept on record at birth. It's a creepy thought, but I bet the crime rate would plummet if everyone knew that they could be easily connected to a crime scene.

I think its a good idea .some countries have a wrist band so that you can track your child. pray for this girls family.

There seems to be a lot of younger folk just disappearing into thin air recently and I feel so sorry for their families who just want some sort of closure. Is this something that has always been happening, but we didn’t know because we didn’t have the means to know?

I really can’t think of anything worse, how do they manage to carry on? Hope they are all found either way, just to let them move on.

Gabriella I brought my children up to be independent and self reliant but I also told them that if they are ever in mess of any kind and I could help I would be there for them. Yes I have got up in the middle of the night and picked my son up when someone ran into his car. For many years I also would go up the road in the middle of the night to pick up my parents who had fallen, not because they were drunk I might add. It is what families do.

My adult children have never needed my help in that way but if I ever (God forbid) get that call to say they are dead it will not be because I have ignored a phone call for help as a result of them making a mistake.
And also, in my world of emergency services, AC frequently get called because Grandma, Mum or Dad has got drunk enough to need my intervention. The vast majority of AC step up to the plate and sort it to avoid putting additional pressure on the NHS. These are not your bog standard alcoholics but normally respectable middle aged to elderly people who have gone out to a party and had one too many, and fallen etc.
This is what families do, they may, and should in my book, give them hell afterwards for being so stupid, but they don't expect other people to step in because they can't be bothered.

Granless
Not into adulthood. Otherwise what are we teaching them? Self reliance? Social and self responsibility? Awareness?
I was taught that you make a ship sturdy enough and with all the proper equipment to navigate the seas of life. If you do your job well, the ship will not sink and will happily carry others.
I wonder what other people's AC would think if Grandma or pa got drunk and needed paramedic intervention. We were kids once and we, my siblings and I, never brought any trouble home as there was never trouble to bring. I respected my parents too much to give them grief.