Bbc Inside Science

A hundred thousand Britons are being asked to donate their sequenced DNA, their personal genome, to a vast database on the internet, so scientists can use the information for medical and genetic research. The Personal Genome Project-UK was launched today and participants are being warned, as part of the screening process, that their anonymity won't be guaranteed. Stephan Beck, Professor of Medical Genomics at University College London's Cancer Institute and the Director of PGP-UK, tells Dr Lucie Green that anonymised genetic databases aren't impregnable, and that it is already possible for an individual's identity to be established using jigsaw identification. This new "open access" approach, he says, will rely on altruistic early-adopters who are comfortable with having their genetic data, their medical history and their personal details freely available as a tool for research. Jane Kaye, Director of the Centre for Law, Health and Emerging Technologies at the University of Oxford, describes the rigorous sele