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A couple of interesting articles this week on the Personal Genome Project and public genomics in general. Mark Henderson at the Times has an opinion piece (behind a paywall, I’m afraid) about Misha Angrist‘s book Here Is A Human Being (see also this review from The Intersection), and in the Duke Magazine Mary Carmichael has an in-depth feature on the work of George Church, with some interesting history of the early days of the PGP.
One aspect that comes out of these articles is how those who take part in public genomics projects are starting to own the unknown unknowns. They accept that they cannot anticipate all the risks of making their data public, but are willing to take the risk of exposing themselves to these unknown risks, and in doing so turn them into knowns. Another aspect is the sheer number of individuals who want to sign up to have their data published online: 15,000 people have expressed interesting in being part of the PGP, despite initial NIH concerns the no-one would want to take part at all. This also chimes with research presented at ASHG this year, showing that members of the public are more concerned with contributing to scientific knowledge, and, crucially, getting access to their own genetic data than they are about the potential risks that such data could expose them too. [LJ]
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