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Comment by daveguy | Hacker News Reader

Are you in biomedical research? I feel like the answer is no, because if you were you'd understand how fast paced discovery is in biotech these days. Just because it's not a threat today (I agree, it isn't), doesn't mean it's not a threat in a 10 or 20 year horizon.

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I agree. If you asked someone at Bell Labs whether the creation of a computer would cause gaming or digital addiction, the thought or idea wouldn't make sense because they didn't know what we know today.

That's great and all but again no genetic data was ever leaked at 23andme but everyone keeps reporting it like this is the information that was accessed by the attackers

Agreed. But I was responding to johnathankoran about whether leaking / releasing your genetic information would even be a potential threat. I think it very well could be in 10-20 years (and possibly much less). Enough of a concern for me that I wouldn't trust a company with that information.

Yup. As soon as I read that they targeted Ashkenazi Jews, I realized this was just consumer reports, not actual genetic information.

No hacker is running nucleobase query.

I was told genetically targeted weapons were just five years away, literally 25 years ago. So forgive me if I seem unduly cynical.

“The BMA has warned that the possibility of developing weapons genetically targeted at different ethnic groups could be just five years away.”

Published Jan 30, 1999

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1114775/

If such a weapon was developed, can you think of a scenario in which it's existence would be secret?

No.

That type of total secrecy only exists in bad movies and conspiracy theories.

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