"Civilization is a bargain to not use [destructive] power [in exchange for peaceful co-existence]." Since this obviously cannot be assured, we need to consider the catalytic role of information technology and act accordingly.How dangerous is the bio-information available today? As he described in the NYT article excerpted here, the virus that caused the deadly 1918 flu is considered too deadly to store and transport for scientific research. If you need a copy, "just reconstruct it yourself. [the genetic sequence is freely available on the Internet.]" The scientists who made that statement were not kidding.
Recipe for Destruction
By RAY KURZWEIL and BILL JOY
AFTER a decade of painstaking research, federal and university scientists have reconstructed the 1918 influenza virus that killed 50 million people worldwide. Like the flu viruses now raising alarm bells in Asia, the 1918 virus was a bird flu that jumped directly to humans, the scientists reported. To shed light on how the virus evolved, the United States Department of Health and Human Services published the full genome of the 1918 influenza virus on the Internet in the GenBank database.
This is extremely foolish. The genome is essentially the design of a weapon of mass destruction. No responsible scientist would advocate publishing precise designs for an atomic bomb, and in two ways revealing the sequence for the flu virus is even more dangerous.
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When our patient privacy violations are looked at in this way, the stakes around privacy go up orders of magnitude from the common perception. Will a patient's records soon contain information about an infectious agent, perhaps including the sequence of a deadly virus, identified in their blood? Yes.
If Bill Joy is correct, and I think he could be, disclosed medical records carry a much greater risk. Notions previously elaborated (below) that "privacy is an illusion (Ellison)" or freely publishing all genetic information (PGP) might be in need of serious revision.
What do you think? Do the risks warrant much more restrictive access procedures for medical information?