7 ms·

If the government encounters one of their kid's DNA, that's enough to identify them as a son/daughter of the person with that DNA profile. If a medical insuran

If the government encounters one of their kid's DNA, that's enough to identify them as a son/daughter of the person with that DNA profile. If a medical insurance company purchases their DNA, analyzes it, and anticipates that a child of theirs is likely to have medical costs 5x the average, those costs will be passed on to those kids, absent legislation to the contrary. This applies to everyone you're related to, as well.

munk-a 7y ago
> If the government encounters one of their kid's DNA, that's enough to identify them as a son/daughter of the person with that DNA profile. I don't believe that's ever been tested in court (so there isn't precedence) and the ways in which DNA are complex enough - and the mutation rate is high enough - that it might be like fingerprints... if you're the only person with DNA that might be like the kind found and you've got some serious suspicion around you for other reasons... then they might be able to use it as supporting evidence or to compel you to submit to DNA testing to confirm the match (which apparently does have precedence in the US... wow America)
- JshWright 7y ago
  Joseph DeAngelo was caught because one of his relatives did a 23andMe style test.
  - cookiecaper 7y ago
    Yeah, this isn't science fiction or conspiracy theory anymore. Several high-profile cold cases have gone hot as police have been trawling the datasets submitted to 23AndMe et al and investigating the family trees of persons whose DNA is similar-ish to the samples in unsolved cases. [0] The results are mainly bupkis anyway, and you're paying for the privilege of having police agencies across the country (world?) give extra scrutiny to you and all of your relations. No thanks. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2018/04/27/golden-state-killer-dna-website-gedmatch-was-used-to-identify-joseph-deangelo-as-suspect-police-say/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2018/04/27...
    - glennpratt 7y ago
      It's all tradeoffs, I want some privacy, but I also like crimes being solved. In fact, I'd see that as a benefit even if I'm related to criminals. Of course this assumes it is used correctly and fairly, which is the hard part.
      - slimed 7y ago
        Stunning naivete on display here
        ewoodrich 7y ago
        How so? They point out the difficulty balancing personal privacy and tools to identify criminals who have evaded justice. Just because you don't agree with the relative importance placed on either side doesn't make them dumb or naive.
        CaptainZapp 7y ago
        What makes you naive is if you put any smidegeon of hope into the fact that insurance companies will not hesitate to buy and abuse such data to fuck you over left, right and central then you really are beyond help. If you want to risk that, fine. But you're also screwing all your relatives in the same swell process. And that's not only naive and dumb, that's totally reckless.
        kalleboo 7y ago
        The solution to that is to abolish or neuter your insurance companies like the us in the rest of the world did. The fact that a private for-profit company decides if you live or die is absurd.
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Last I checked, medical and life insurance is a thing everywhere else in the world as well. While a public healthcare system will pay for your treatment, it will not pay for the loss of earnings/business during your stay in the hospital and convalescence, nor will it pay you if you end up with a permanent disability (social security may cover a pittance of the latter).
- exolymph 7y ago
  Dude, what? The whole reason why DNA is forensically useful at all is that you can use it to pinpoint people.
- Legogris 7y ago
  Court..? AFAIK insurance companies in the US are free to model and quote you as they wish with the information they can legally get
  - mbreese 7y ago
    Actually, they are expressly prohibited from using your genetic information to make decisions about your coverage. It's the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) [1], where: > ... health insurers may not use genetic information to make eligibility, coverage, underwriting or premium-setting decisions. However, it doesn't apply to all insurance: > It does not cover long-term care insurance, life insurance, or disability insurance. [1] https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/policy-issues/Genetic-Discrimination https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/policy-issues/Genetic-...
    - rurp 7y ago
      This is good, but also leads to the obvious follow up question of how stringently it has and will be enforced. It's also illegal to lose PII and credit info for millions of people but, well, here we are.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Also, parallel construction. Also, data laundering - you drop DNA test data into a business analytics third party, and two data brokers later this arrives at your insurance company as a personal profile "created from data about your shopping habits collected on-line and off-line", or something like this. Don't know for sure if that's actually happening, but I assume it is.
    - Legogris 7y ago
      Huh, had no idea, thanks for bringing that up. Obvious follow-up question: Say the insurance company is using a third-party that they buy some kind of individual "healthiness/sickness benchmark" from, that just so happens to be heavily derived from on this genetic information, which the health insurer never sees in raw - would that fall under this? Seems like an easy way to skirt this regulation, but i am obv NAL.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  A parent/child relationship is crystal clear in the genetic data (barring the case where what you're actually seeing is an aunt or uncle and the child of their identical twin). And I'm pretty sure paternity tests have a lot of precedent in US courts.
  - tareqak 7y ago
    Do you mean chimeralism [0][1]? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)#Humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)#Humans [1] https://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=2315693 https://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=2315693
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      No, I mean that your identical twin's child will appear to be your child under a genetic test, for the obvious reason that you and your identical twin have the same genetics.
- Fezzik 7y ago
  Which has not been done in court? I work in juvenile dependency law and we use paternity-by-DNA to establish and disestablish fathers every day. Other divisions of the DOJ use DNA to establish parents for the purposes of childcare payments. There are loads of statutes and case law regarding DNA testing to determine parentage.
- MiroF 7y ago
  Uh, it absolutely has - and with more distant connections than direct parentage. See the recent Golden State Killer case for instance, as well as a myriad of others.
  - AlexCoventry 7y ago
    That shows it's enough to establish probable cause, but once they'd identified him, they got a direct DNA match, which means he won't be a test of the ancestral scenario outlined in the GP.
    - saberdancer 7y ago
      Yeah but it is enough for them to find them, and then retrieve a cup the "suspect" used and threw out in public.
stjohnswarts 7y ago
Yeah I keep waiting to hear about insurance companies finally paying off politicians enough to get HIPPA revoked.

munk-a 7y ago

> If the government encounters one of their kid's DNA, that's enough to identify them as a son/daughter of the person with that DNA profile. I don't believe that's ever been tested in court (so there isn't precedence) and the ways in which DNA are complex enough - and the mutation rate is high enough - that it might be like fingerprints... if you're the only person with DNA that might be like the kind found and you've got some serious suspicion around you for other reasons... then they might be able to use it as supporting evidence or to compel you to submit to DNA testing to confirm the match (which apparently does have precedence in the US... wow America)

JshWright 7y ago
Joseph DeAngelo was caught because one of his relatives did a 23andMe style test.
- cookiecaper 7y ago
  Yeah, this isn't science fiction or conspiracy theory anymore. Several high-profile cold cases have gone hot as police have been trawling the datasets submitted to 23AndMe et al and investigating the family trees of persons whose DNA is similar-ish to the samples in unsolved cases. [0] The results are mainly bupkis anyway, and you're paying for the privilege of having police agencies across the country (world?) give extra scrutiny to you and all of your relations. No thanks. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2018/04/27/golden-state-killer-dna-website-gedmatch-was-used-to-identify-joseph-deangelo-as-suspect-police-say/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2018/04/27...
  - glennpratt 7y ago
    It's all tradeoffs, I want some privacy, but I also like crimes being solved. In fact, I'd see that as a benefit even if I'm related to criminals. Of course this assumes it is used correctly and fairly, which is the hard part.
    - slimed 7y ago
      Stunning naivete on display here
      - ewoodrich 7y ago
        How so? They point out the difficulty balancing personal privacy and tools to identify criminals who have evaded justice. Just because you don't agree with the relative importance placed on either side doesn't make them dumb or naive.
        CaptainZapp 7y ago
        What makes you naive is if you put any smidegeon of hope into the fact that insurance companies will not hesitate to buy and abuse such data to fuck you over left, right and central then you really are beyond help. If you want to risk that, fine. But you're also screwing all your relatives in the same swell process. And that's not only naive and dumb, that's totally reckless.
        kalleboo 7y ago
        The solution to that is to abolish or neuter your insurance companies like the us in the rest of the world did. The fact that a private for-profit company decides if you live or die is absurd.
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Last I checked, medical and life insurance is a thing everywhere else in the world as well. While a public healthcare system will pay for your treatment, it will not pay for the loss of earnings/business during your stay in the hospital and convalescence, nor will it pay you if you end up with a permanent disability (social security may cover a pittance of the latter).
exolymph 7y ago
Dude, what? The whole reason why DNA is forensically useful at all is that you can use it to pinpoint people.
Legogris 7y ago
Court..? AFAIK insurance companies in the US are free to model and quote you as they wish with the information they can legally get
- mbreese 7y ago
  Actually, they are expressly prohibited from using your genetic information to make decisions about your coverage. It's the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) [1], where: > ... health insurers may not use genetic information to make eligibility, coverage, underwriting or premium-setting decisions. However, it doesn't apply to all insurance: > It does not cover long-term care insurance, life insurance, or disability insurance. [1] https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/policy-issues/Genetic-Discrimination https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/policy-issues/Genetic-...
  - rurp 7y ago
    This is good, but also leads to the obvious follow up question of how stringently it has and will be enforced. It's also illegal to lose PII and credit info for millions of people but, well, here we are.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Also, parallel construction. Also, data laundering - you drop DNA test data into a business analytics third party, and two data brokers later this arrives at your insurance company as a personal profile "created from data about your shopping habits collected on-line and off-line", or something like this. Don't know for sure if that's actually happening, but I assume it is.
  - Legogris 7y ago
    Huh, had no idea, thanks for bringing that up. Obvious follow-up question: Say the insurance company is using a third-party that they buy some kind of individual "healthiness/sickness benchmark" from, that just so happens to be heavily derived from on this genetic information, which the health insurer never sees in raw - would that fall under this? Seems like an easy way to skirt this regulation, but i am obv NAL.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
A parent/child relationship is crystal clear in the genetic data (barring the case where what you're actually seeing is an aunt or uncle and the child of their identical twin). And I'm pretty sure paternity tests have a lot of precedent in US courts.
- tareqak 7y ago
  Do you mean chimeralism [0][1]? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)#Humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)#Humans [1] https://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=2315693 https://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=2315693
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    No, I mean that your identical twin's child will appear to be your child under a genetic test, for the obvious reason that you and your identical twin have the same genetics.
Fezzik 7y ago
Which has not been done in court? I work in juvenile dependency law and we use paternity-by-DNA to establish and disestablish fathers every day. Other divisions of the DOJ use DNA to establish parents for the purposes of childcare payments. There are loads of statutes and case law regarding DNA testing to determine parentage.
MiroF 7y ago
Uh, it absolutely has - and with more distant connections than direct parentage. See the recent Golden State Killer case for instance, as well as a myriad of others.
- AlexCoventry 7y ago
  That shows it's enough to establish probable cause, but once they'd identified him, they got a direct DNA match, which means he won't be a test of the ancestral scenario outlined in the GP.
  - saberdancer 7y ago
    Yeah but it is enough for them to find them, and then retrieve a cup the "suspect" used and threw out in public.

stjohnswarts 7y ago

Yeah I keep waiting to hear about insurance companies finally paying off politicians enough to get HIPPA revoked.