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This guide provides information about DNA including privacy and ethical issues.

What is DNA?

DNA, or Deoxyribonucleic Acid, is a molecule that contains the genetic code of organisms. It determines the structure and function of every cell and is responsible for characteristics being passed on from parents to their children.

Your DNA is what makes you uniquely you.


Additional Information

There are now many at-home genetic testing kits, but some of them are unreliable. People should be careful with these kits, since the tests are essentially handing over a person's genetic code to a stranger. As the popularity of at-home genetic testing kits has increased, so has awareness in the medical community of the need to better inform consumers about the limitations of them.


Issues To Be Aware Of:

1. Be aware of potential risks, which not only includes the possibility of learning about worrisome health information but also awareness that companies store the data for internal research.

2. All genetic testing companies have privacy and consent rules that need to be read carefully.

3. With any DNA test you order for yourself from home, the results can be fun conversation starters with friends and family, but anyone with a specific heritable health concern should visit a genetics professional for counseling.

4. Three words: Online Data Theft

Yale Medicine


How can it be used?

  • It can physically connect a piece of evidence to a person or rule out someone as a suspect.

It also has medical uses. It can:

  • Identify diseases that are passed down through your family.
  • Help find cures for those diseases, called hereditary conditions.

Science Museum

Many people have a visceral, negative reaction to the idea of a universal DNA database. Their main concern? That a universal DNA database would grossly invade their privacy.

A universal DNA database's benefits in efficiently and effectively solving crimes, exonerating the innocent, and decreasing racial disparities in law enforcement, however, make such a database immensely appealing from a public safety and criminal justice perspective. As of April 2017, the federal DNA database has assisted in more than 358,069 investigations. DNA evidence has exonerated 350 innocents who combined had served 4787 years in prison, sometimes on death row. DNA also enabled law enforcement to identify 149 of the true perpetrators of those crimes, who ‘went on to be convicted of 147 additional violent crimes, including 77 sexual assaults, 35 murders, and 35 other violent crimes while the innocent sat behind bars for their earlier offenses. A universal DNA database could have prevented those 350 false convictions and 147 later violent crimes.

Discussions about universal databases are often halted by invasion of privacy concerns. Are those concerns rational? By analyzing a universal DNA database's design, the probability that imagined abuses would occur, and the invasive investigative techniques the database could end, this article demonstrates that a universal DNA database might actually improve privacy.

I. Current DNA Databases

DNA databases are already maintained by every state and the federal government. All states require DNA samples to be taken from individuals convicted of certain crimes.Twenty-nine states and the federal government even collect DNA from individuals arrested, but not yet convicted, for certain offenses. All states have some process for expunging DNA profiles if a charge is dropped or the individual is acquitted, though most states require individuals to initiate the process. Only 36 per cent of state DNA profiles are incorporated into the national Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database.

II. Limiting a Universal DNA Database's Privacy-Invasion Potential

A universal DNA database could be designed very similarly to current DNA databases, none of which have been declared unreasonable invasions of privacy. Only three changes are necessary to create a universal database: (a.) include all individuals, not just those convicted or arrested for qualifying offenses; (b.) repeal profile expungement laws; and (c.) better integrate or combine existing databases.

Other Safeguards:

1. DNA is stored in physically secured locations with limited access.

2. Related names are stored separately to prevent tampering and misuse.

3. Database abuses are discouraged through fines, criminal charges and possible jail time.

A universal DNA database with the suggested privacy safeguards would be well protected against abuses, manipulation, and theft. While there is a risk some of these privacy protections could be circumvented with considerable effort, ‘we do not normally ban a technology due to the fear that no law can prevent’ its misuse, and in fact we have adopted beneficial technologies that pose significantly greater dangers to privacy than a universal DNA database.

Journal of Law and the Biosciences, Dec. 2017



Assuming the tests are done accurately, some discrepancies can still arise from differences in the companies’ DNA databases. Almost every DTC genetic test does not sequence your entire genome, but instead looks at positions in your DNA that are known to be of interest. For anything from your hair or eye color to a specific disease, all of the gene variants only offer a probability of a predisposition toward a certain condition.


Scientific American

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