Fears over privacy of gene data

Employers, health insurers and police could access the public's genetic information through medical records in the future, experts have told a privacy seminar.

Health consumer advocate Barbara Robson told the Privacy Issues Forum in Wellington yesterday that routine genetic mapping at birth could soon be a reality.

Employers, banks, insurers, police and researchers were among third parties that could be interested in that information but there was concern carriers of genetic diseases, and those predisposed to cancer and other diseases, could be stigmatised.

Guidelines on how much of a person's genetic information can be shared should be put in place now, with public involvement, Ms Robson said.

"The technology's advanced so rapidly, and there hasn't been really any debate in the public arena.

"The public and consumers should have an active role in deciding the boundaries beyond which society shall not go."

Professor Donald Evans, director of the Otago University Bioethics Centre, said genetically screening newborns could prove invaluable for the health system. "Maximal access to maximal data is very useful in healthcare."

The Privacy Issues Forum, held as part of Privacy Awareness Week, also covered issues surrounding the dna database, social networking and business.

Trade Me spokesman Mike O'Donnell told the forum how customers reacted angrily when confidential client details ended up with a prison inmate.

Concerned members flooded the site's office with phone calls and e-mails. "We were pretty pissed off to discover the information we had supplied found its way to a jail cell in Mt Eden."

Mr O'Donnell said if anyone ever needed reinforcement of the "primacy of privacy to business, then this was a pretty good example".

Trade Me is this country's most-visited website and accounts for almost 70 per cent of all Internet traffic in New Zealand.

Mr O'Donnell said the site had "quite a privacy challenge". with more than 2.1 million members and more than 1.5 million auctions closing every week. "People come to Trade Me because they trust it," he said. "It's really, really simple. If people stop trusting Trade Me, they stop coming."

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