[mrweasel]

Yes, yours specifically, but what if I want like 200.000 people so I can find one that has a DNA profile similar to mine, who could serve as a escape-goat or victim?

Maybe I want to steal a kidney, or a child that could reasonably pass as my own?

[joshstrange]

> escape-goat

Unless this is an online joke I don't get, I think you mean "scapegoat".

[mongol]

Seems to be the same thing.

"The concept comes from an ancient Jewish ritual described in the Bible, specifically in Leviticus 16. During the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), two goats were chosen: one to be sacrificed and the other to be sent into the wilderness, symbolically carrying away the sins of the community. This second goat was called the "Azazel" or the "scapegoat".

Over time, the term "scapegoat" evolved to have a more general meaning in English. It came to refer to a person or group that is unjustly blamed for the problems or misfortunes of others, reflecting the original ritual in which the goat was symbolically burdened with the sins of others before being sent away. "

[VBprogrammer]

In the US, the bad actor here is much more likely to be insurance companies who can tune their secret algorithms to make sure no one with a gene tied to an illness which blooms later in life can get affordable heath care.

[tfehring]

In the US, health insurers can only price based on age, location, and tobacco use. Setting health insurance premiums or denying coverage based on any health-related factors has been illegal for over a decade, and changing that would be totally unviable politically.

However, it's a significant risk for other types of insurance including life, disability, and long term care.

[imiric]

Just because it's illegal, doesn't mean health insurance companies don't find loopholes, and consider fines when they get caught as the cost of doing business. See this series of articles[1] for some of their criminal shenanigans.

It's more than likely that they would use genetic data to deny insurance, and then settle the cases in court if they happen to get sued, which statistically is probably a rare occurrence.

[1]: https://www.propublica.org/series/uncovered

[maxerickson]

They are denying claims. If they are going to do that, why would they condition it on genetics (vs just denying anything they think they can)?

The paranoia about insurance and genetics is that they simply refuse to do business with high risk customers.

[searine]

>but what if I want like 200.000 people so I can find one that has a DNA profile similar to mine

There are already literally entire databases of millions of peoples DNA freely available for scientific research.

[mrweasel]

Not with names and contact information I assume?

[searine]

If you were smart enough to hack 23andMe to get genetic data to find a specific person, you'd be smart enough to reconstruct identities from publicly available data. You'd just have to cross-reference public anonymous databases with public non-anonymous ones. Both of which exist, and are free.

So far, the only real use-case for doing this is people trying to identify criminals from just DNA.

[slingnow]

You realize this data is often available for purchase or eventually publicly leaked, right? You don't have to be "smart enough" to do the hacking to benefit from it.