When consent gets in the way

Abstract

As the prospect of personal genomes for all promises to revolutionize personal health records, Patrick Taylor says that mandating consent does not protect privacy or ensure public benefit. As the number of humans with their genomes fully sequenced grows and direct-to-consumer gene profiling companies push the boundaries of medical genetics, the once fanciful idea that medical and other interventions can be tailored around an individual's personal genome begins to look plausible. Which raises the question: how do we use this wealth of information? This issue focuses on personal genomics and its consequences. In News Features we seek the 'missing heritability' that seems to limit the number of disease-linked genes being found, look at a technology that may drive next generation of DNA sequencing machines and reflect on the surprise closure of a lab at the forefront of genomics research. Commentaries discuss the problems of balancing an individual's rights to privacy with the maximization for public benefit and the ethics of personal genome tests. These matters are considered in the Editorial and go to http://tinyurl.com/6clk2x to air your views in the Nature forum. See also News and download the podcast from http://www.nature.com/podcast .