NAB
With our future increasingly set to be lived online, the
battle for control of our personal data will intensify. Some of us will
continue to trade private details (ranging from our location to our shopping
habits) for the convenience of mobile internet communication and digital
experiences.
https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/human-nature-science-the-connection-to-nfts/
But what price should you put on your own DNA?
This is the logical outcome of being able to lock a record
of our individual genetic code into a one-of-a-kind NFT authenticated on the
blockchain.
What’s more, it is already happening.
All of us are composed of millions of cells each with their
own complete set of instructions for (re)making us, called the genome.
Earlier this year, Harvard University geneticist George
Church and a company he co-founded, Nebula Genomics in San Francisco,
advertised their intention to sell an NFT of Church’s genome.
As reported in science journal Nature, Church was
forced to walk back on his initial plan, instead auctioning NFTs featuring an
artwork based on his likeness.
The stated reason, Nebula Genomics told Nature, was
because the NFT and crypto markets declined in value. Some fellow scientists
thought it was is a PR stunt as it so happens that Church’s Genome is sequenced
and freely available as part of the Human Genome Project he helped to launch.
Church has history in whipping up the sector, having previously
proposed creating a dating app based on DNA and currently intent on
resurrecting the woolly mammoth.
The journal speculates that in fact Church’s NFT Genome idea
was testing the waters.
“Nebula Genomics already uses blockchain technology to allow
15,000 people whose entire genomes it has sequenced to grant temporary access
to their data to specific users (such as pharmaceutical companies searching for
links between genes and diseases). NFTs could in future provide a handy system
to let customers make money from those exchanges.”
Nature reports other companies similarly
experimenting with ways for customers to sell genomic data on blockchain
marketplaces.
“The idea is to give users more control of their data and to
direct profits straight to the individuals, thereby encouraging more people to
get their genomes sequenced.”
Selling personal genomes opens up ethical issues.
Bioethicist Vardit Ravitsky, at the University of Montreal in Canada, asks
whether any individual truly owns their genome, given that much of it is shared
with family members. She also notes there are already debates about whether
people should be allowed to make money from their biological resources, for
example through sperm donation. The problem of selling data, she says, “will be
the next generation of these issues.”
So there may be a market for selling your Genome into the
scientific community. A financial incentive would boost the amount of Genome
sequences for research, the goal of which in some cases is to find cures for
diseases like cancer.
Since an NFT retains the IP of its original creator in
perpetuity no matter how many times it is traded, sliced and diced, it would
gift the IP owner royalties in return.
There’s an obvious dystopian scenario here too, one that
would no doubt interest a Hollywood script writer. If Church can rebuild a
woolly mammoth using genetic editing then, in time, someone can surely
reanimate a human.
What happens if someone owns our genome NFT and wants to
meddle with it, whether we agree to it or not? What happens if we’re still
alive and meet an identikit version of our younger selves, Gemini Man-style?
The factory scale minting of billions of genome NFTs, or
even a black market exchange of our personal code, strips what is left of our
privacy down to the bone.
It’s a digital Soylent Green.
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