If you want to keep your DNA to yourself, be sure not to leave any stray hairs, Q-tips or underwear lying around. There are genetic testing companies out there willing to reveal your most intimate biological secrets to anybody -- without your knowledge or permission. And under California law, such genetic snooping is perfectly legal. Now, legislators in Sacramento are considering a bill to change that. Senate Bill 222, which faces a key hearing Thursday, would require a donor's consen... [More]

  Cell is looking into whether the authors of a widely hailed study published last week claiming to have turned human skin cells into embryonic stem cells manipulated images inappropriately, Retraction Watch has learned. The potential image problems came to light on PubPeer, a site designed to allow for post-publication peer review. A commenter, identified as Peer1, identified “several examples of image reuse which might be of interest to PubPeer members and readers:” ... [More]

The Forensic Genetics Policy Initiative (FGPI) is a global human rights project, chaired by the Council for Responsible Genetics, GeneWatch UK and Privacy International, which is dedicated to ensuring that the expansion of DNA databases is consistent with human rights principles.   Today the FGPI submitted comments to the South African Parliament on the recently introduced Criminal Law (Forensic Procedures) Amendment Bill.  This bill creates a legislative framework ... [More]

ANGELINA JOLIE’S revelation that she had had a preventive double mastectomy was eloquent and brave. She had learned that she inherited a faulty copy of a gene, BRCA1, that put her at high risk for invasive breast cancer as well as ovarian cancer. Now women everywhere are asking: Should I get the same test? What will it cost? Only one in about 400 women carry mutations to BRCA1 or to a related gene BRCA2, though such hereditary defects are implicated in between 5 percent and 10 perce... [More]

A top deputy at the medical examiner’s office who has been lauded for her work in DNA testing resigned amid revelations that she sidestepped lab protocol in at least two criminal cases, the Daily News has learned. The abrupt April 19 departure of Theresa Caragine is the latest snafu to befall the office and has already affected ongoing cases in the Bronx and Brooklyn, according to court papers. Hundreds of rape cases the office examined were already under review due to potentially ... [More]

  Scientists have used cloning technology to transform human skin cells into embryonic stem cells, an experiment that may revive the controversy over human cloning. The researchers stopped well short of creating a human clone. But they showed, for the first time, that it is possible to create cloned embryonic stem cells that are genetically identical to the person from whom they are derived. These stem cells could go on to differentiate into heart, nerve, muscle, bone and a... [More]

                 Presidential panel, ACMG, and experts struggle with what patients should learn, and how. Sarah Hilgenberg, M.D., was a self-described “hard-working, high achieving, strong willed, Type A 20-something” who wanted to help a friend and earn $40 for herself when she volunteered in 2002 for an MRI scan of her brain. During her third scan, doctors found an anomaly. Originally thinking it ... [More]

The Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments and examined one of the most pivotal cases in healthcare and personalized medicine: AMP v. Myriad Genetics. The case will determine if patents on human genes should be allowed, and the Court is expected to issue a decision next month. This case is important because Myriad genetics holds patents for the breast cancer associated genes (BRCA1 and BRCA2), and only they can legally examine these fragments of DNA from your body. The Association of ... [More]

  The US adolescents who signed up for the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) in the 1970s were the smartest of the smart, with mathematical and verbal-reasoning skills within the top 1% of the population. Now, researchers at BGI (formerly the Beijing Genomics Institute) in Shenzhen, China, the largest gene-sequencing facility in the world, are searching for the quirks of DNA that may contribute to such gifts. Plunging into an area that is littered with failures and ri... [More]

The Supreme Court recently began deliberations in a case that highlights a deeply problematic issue concerning intellectual property rights: Can human genes—your genes—be patented? Put another way, should someone essentially be permitted to own the right, say, to test whether you have a set of genes that imply a higher than 50 percent probability of developing breast cancer? To those outside the arcane world of intellectual property rights, the answer seems obvious: No. You ... [More]