Yesterday the Wall Street Journal Health Blog reported a new social network that will sequence and post the genes and records of 100,000 willing subjects.
The venture, led by George Church, a genetics professor at Harvard Medical School, received approval from the university's ethical review board in April. To capture the information, scientists launched the Personal Genome Project (PGP).
The development follows the passage of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which Spectrum reported on in June. The bill, as the title suggests, prohibits work place discrimination based on the results of genetic tests.
As reported by the Boston Globe, "the (PFP) project aims to advance genome research by tapping volunteers who have a Facebook-mentality sense of privacy - minimal - and enough excitement about genomic science that they are willing to lay out their genetic and medical information so any researcher can sift through it for links between genes and traits."
-Erica Anderson, Senior Digital Strategist
