Data misuse ‘unseen’ twist in DNA test

Trend raises concerns about data privacy

LONDON, Dec 15, (RTRS): Taken away as an infant and placed for adoption, Jen Stein was afraid that knowing nothing about her Native American past or potential hereditary diseases could put her and her children’s health at risk.

So, like millions of people around the world, she bought a home DNA test kit to find out her health profile and ancestry — a growing market dominated by companies 23andMe and Ancestry.

The simple, saliva-based test, which costs about $100, changed her life and led to Stein finally reuniting with her long-lost biological mother.

“My girls and I feel like we know more about why we are the way we are, and who we are. It’s made a huge impact,” the 41-year-old said in a phone interview from Washington state.

The number of people who have had their DNA analyzed by the consumer-testing companies has taken off since 2016 and now stands at nearly 17 million, according to science website DNAGeeks.com.

By 2021, the website estimates, that figure could be more than 100 million.

“People in part use DNA tests to base their identity, to give them some assurance for certain things and where they came from,” said DNA scientist Yaniv Erlich, who is also the chief science officer at genealogy consumer company MyHeritage.

“That’s why it’s so popular. Technology is now highly affordable — a decade ago this was something that only extremely rich people could do,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

But the trend has raised concerns about data privacy. Those were heightened after US police in April used DNA records held by consumer websites to track down the “Golden State Killer”, an ex-policeman responsible for rapes and killings in the 1970s and 1980s in California.

Investigators finally cracked the case by comparing crime scene DNA to genetic information on commercial genealogy websites that people use to explore their ancestry. The process led to a relative of the killer.

Legal expert Andelka Phillips, who has

on where the ivory was supposed to be headed, but said Cambodia was only being used as a transit point.

Large hauls of smuggled wildlife goods are not uncommon in Cambodia. In recent years, the BANGKOK, Dec 15, (RTRS): Google said on Thursday it had launched an artificial intelligence programme in Thailand to screen for a diabetic eye disease which causes permanent blindness.

The eye screening programme in Thailand follows a similar Google programme in India and highlights a push by big tech companies to show the social benefits of new AI technologies.

“As a society, we have a responsibility to use AI in the best possible way,” Kent Walker, the company’s Senior Vice-President for Global Affairs, said in speech at a Google event in Bangkok on Thursday.

The event also highlighted other social benefits of Google’s AI projects, such as stopping illegal fishing in Indonesia.

Google’s Thailand diabetes programme was announced in partnership with a Thai state-run Rajavithi Hospital. This followed a joint-study which found the AI programme to have an accuracy rate of 95 percent when it comes to disease detection, compared with 74

spent a decade researching genetic privacy, said she was not surprised that DNA information uploaded by consumers could be used for something other than its intended purposes.

“Genetic data can be used for a wide range of secondary purposes, and we might not be able to anticipate all of the ways that this might be used in the future,” said the New Zealand-based researcher.

She said the popularity of consumer genetic services could lead to further privacy issues — for instance, drug or insurance companies could use this data to target consumers.

“People do value privacy differently.

country has earned a reputation for being a hub for the illegal wildlife trade, most of it driven by demand from China and Vietnam.

In May 2014, Cambodian customs officials seized some 3 tons of

African ivory hidden in a container of beans at the country’s southwestern port of Sihanoukville. (AP)

Zero-CO2 bus fleet:

percent from opticians or eye doctors.

The programme analyses patients’ eye screen results to assess if they are at a risk of vision loss, which will enable them to have preemptive treatment.

Thailand is one of the world’s most important sugar producers and high sugar consumption is common amongst its 69 million population.

The Thai government has been campaigning against behaviour that can lead to diabetes and has made the diabetic eye screening one of the country’s national health indicators since 2015.

Thailand has only around 1,400 eye doctors for its 5 million diabetic patients, who are all at risk of the vision loss, Paisan Ruamviboonsuk, Ravajithi Hospital’s assistant director, told reporters.

Paisan said the programme is intended to achieve a nationwide eye screening rate of 60 percent, which is also the Thai government’s target.

In October, Google said it would grant about $25 million globally next year to humanitarian and environmental projects seeking to use AI for good.

But certain things that we use for security, like a bank password, we can change,” said Phillips, research associate for the Centre for Health, Law and Emerging Technologies at Britain’s University of Oxford.

“But once your DNA is sequenced and stored, you can’t change that,” she said.

Since DNA lasts for centuries and holds a vast amount of information about a person and their family, it would be dangerous should that data fall into the wrong hands, MyHeritage’s Erlich said.

“From my fingerprints you wouldn’t know that I’m Jewish. From my DNA, you can learn that I have Jewish heritage,” Erlich said in an interview.

California

moved Friday to eliminate fossil fuels from its fleet of 12,000 transit buses, enacting a first-inthe-nation mandate that will vastly increase the number of electric buses on the road.

The California Air Resources Board voted to require that all new buses be carbon-free by 2029. Environmental advocates project that the last greenhouse-gas-emitting buses will phase out by 2040.

While clean buses cost more than the diesel and natural gas vehicles they’ll replace, advocates of the mandate say they have lower maintenance and fuel costs. Supporters hope creating demand for thousands of clean buses will bring down the price of those buses and eventually other heavyduty vehicles like trucks.

“Every state could do a strategy like this,” said Adrian Martinez, an attorney for Earthjustice, an environmental legal group that supports the rule. “This is something that California did first because we have major air quality and pollution problems, but this is something other states could pursue. (AP)