DNA kits raise security concerns

WASHINGTON - Test kits to check one's DNA heritage have never been cheaper. Prices have fallen to less than $50, and in at least one instance, thousands of people were offered free tests.

It's a commercial brawl, but one that stretches far beyond the marketplace to raise sensitive issues of privacy and personal identity.

And it is likely to intensify. Ten million to 15 million people in the United States already have taken the DNA tests, and the number is rising quickly.

For many people, the tests are fodder for cocktail conversation, revealing exotic aspects of their heritage. For others, results can help track lost relatives or build family trees.

As DNA tests proliferate, though, some experts worry consumers may be getting a bad bargain. They say DNA data may fall into the wrong hands, betraying consumers and even making them the target of advertising by companies aware of their genetic predispositions, such as overeating or gambling.

The DNA kits - and advertising for them - are spreading fast. In September, a biotech company, Orig3n Inc., promised 55,000 football fans headed to Baltimore's M&T Bank Stadium for a Ravens game that they would get a free DNA test. All they had to do was swab their mouths and drop the swabs in a bin on the way home.

Maryland regulators questioned the promotion, and to avoid potential legal problems, the company postponed the plan before game day.

Competition is intensifying. Year-end sales that began around Thanksgiving made some DNA kits available for slightly under $50.

Not mentioned in the sales blitz and bargain-basement pricing, though, is that human genetic material can be extremely valuable to some commercial interests, experts said, and some companies are making a profit by selling the information they collect.

'They are selling it to you on the front end, and they are commercializing it on the back end,” said Bennett Greenspan, president and founder of Family Tree DNA, a Houston company.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., called last week for more scrutiny of how the consumer genomics companies can sell DNA databases.

'DNA testing firms don't clearly disclose to consumers exactly what they are doing with the DNA once a person's cheek swab is sent in to the company,” Schumer said. 'Most people, if they knew that this information could be sold to third parties, would think twice. '

Schumer urged the Federal Trade Commission to examine the industry to ensure that companies have 'clear, fair privacy policies.”

At least a half dozen companies are significant players in the field, including Ancestry, 23andMe and MyHeritage. Many smaller ones, some in Europe, also compete.

'It's doubling in size practically every year. It's just growing at an astronomical rate,” said Blaine T. Bettinger, a lawyer in Syracuse, N.Y., who also holds a doctorate in molecular biology and blogs as the Genetic Genealogist.

'People are naturally curious over what their DNA can tell them,” said Michelle De Mooy, director of the privacy and data project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington, D.C., think tank that studies privacy and governance issues.

But De Mooy said there are problems ahead for the industry, particularly if testing companies don't adequately protect the security of the genetic databases and ensure that consumers don't find that their own DNA is giving business or the government a leg up against them.

'It's really inevitable that these databases will be breached” by hackers, De Mooy said. 'This is just tempting, tempting data for the government, too.”