YOU AND YOUR DNA

6 Billion Bits of Data About Me, Me, Me! … By AMY HARMON …Published: June 3, 2007 … John Dunn for The New York Times
JAMES D. WATSON, who helped crack the DNA code half a century ago, last week became the first person handed the full text of his own DNA on a small computer disk. But he won’t be the last.
Soon enough, scientists say, we will all be able to decipher our own genomes — the six billion letters of genetic code containing the complete inventory of the traits we inherited from our parents — for as little as $1,000.
Just what we will do with the essence of who we are once we bottle it, however, is likely to be as much a social experiment as a scientific one.
As thousands of people decode their DNA over the next few years, they are likely to find themselves facing a genetic mirror whose reflection changes on an almost daily basis.
The more genomes that scientists have to work with, the more they can learn about them. So staying on top of your own health outlook may begin to resemble checking the performance of your stock portfolio. One day you find you have a gene that puts you at risk for diabetes; the next it’s one that may make you live longer.
“Nobody quite knows how to manage expectations in such a rapidly changing and deeply personal field,” said George M. Church, a Harvard Medical School geneticist who directs the Personal Genome Project. “The picture is getting more and more complete, but along the way there’s going to be a lot of, ‘You told us this last week and now you’re telling us this!’ ”

Your complete DNA on a computer disk the size of a DVD, but who controls access to this data . . . ?

It’s not that my DNA can be placed on a small computer disk, rather it is who will have access to my information and for what purpose can it be used…?

For example can my DNA information be used against me...? To deny me life insurance, or a job, or medical coverage…?

Will my DNA place me a that selected group of world wide citizens deemed “expendable” pursuant to the proponents of CODEX…?

Having total DNA information for every citizen of the world may be a noble goal in an environment where the people have and exercise effective oversight, not in our current world environment wherein “corporation$” own and control most all forms of mass communication$ and publication$.

Call me conspiracy theorists, but I don’t trust my government to act in my better long term interest. I fully expect all my elected political leaders to act solely to protect their own self-interest and to sell me out in a New York minute.