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4 comments
Individuals should not own their DNA but should have input on and hopefully control over how it's used.
DNA occurs naturally and cannot be subject to manipulation outside the confines of a laboratory. It makes sense to me to consider this reason enough to not invoke property rights on DNA unless it's been altered in a lab setting. A 2013 Supreme Court ruling decided in this way by invalidating a claim for patents over naturally occurring qualities of DNA.
Having control over how one's DNA is used would be nice, in my opinion. DNA banks can share DNA profiles with law enforcement, which can be worrisome, especially for some historically target populations. But DNA databases can also allow you to share your DNA for research on diseases or other medical issues, which would be great by me.
For some, the opposite may be true. So allowing people to choose which aspects of DNA use they're open to, if any, makes sense to me.
There's an interesting view on data privacy that might resonate w/ DNA ownership. Since our data privacy is only marginally valuable to us as individuals, one argument is that we should share ownership to Data Trusts that can act in our collective interests.
I wonder whether they same approach might be used for DNA?
This is really fascinating. The Data Trust route makes a lot of sense to me---it would be practical/solve the messy issue of potentially literally billions of people with different choices on the use of their DNA.
DNA shouldn't be 'owned' by anyone but we should have control over how any information about our own DNA is used
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