Top scientist urges a ‘Facebook-style’ trade in gene data

If people are willing to trade their private data with Facebook and Google for free services, they should also consider trade-offs for their genetic data, the government’s chief scientific adviser has claimed.

Mark Ferguson, who is also the head of Science Foundation Ireland, made the comments in an Irish Times advertorial in which he argued that using genomics – the technique of harvesting and sequencing the genes of a large cohort of the ...