竊密風雲：誰偷了你的基因？
最新科技
作者：by David Ewing Duncan
Keeping track of what we reveal about ourselves each day—through email and text messages， Amazon purchases and Facebook“likes”—is hard enough.
Imagine a future when 1）Big Data has access not only to our shopping habits， but also to our DNA and other deeply personal data collected about our bodies and behavior—and about the inner workings of our proteins and cells. What will the government and others do with that data？
Consider this 2）scenario： A few years from now the 3）National Security Agency hires a young analyst trained in cyber-genetics. She is assigned to comb through millions of DNA profiles in search of markers that might identify terrorists and spies and other persons of interest.
With her top-secret 4）clearance， the NSA’s new analyst discovers that the agency has accessed the genetic records of not only suspected terrorists， but also heads of state and leaders in industry， academia， the arts and news media. Troubled by what she has learned， the analyst announces that she’s taking a vacation， and flies to a 5）neutral country carrying top-secret cyber-genetic documents stored on an encrypted 6）nanochip. Like Edward Snowden， she gives her data to a reporter， hoping to 7）rectify the injustices she has witnessed.
For better or worse， we’re not there yet. In 2014， neither the government nor the public sector are anywhere near having a 8）World Wide Web for genetic and other personal 9）molecular data， or a global wireless network that can access anyone’s genetic data from anywhere. If this were the Internet， our current technology would be from about 1985—at the very beginning.
Physicians， however， are already using genomics to predict and diagnose diseases such as breast cancer and 10）macular degeneration. Thousands of parents use prenatal genetic tests to check if their embryo or fetus carries genes for devastating diseases such as 11）Tay-Sachs or 12）Fragile X syndrome. Researchers have discovered genetic markers that can identify 13）mutations in cancerous tumors， allowing doctors to target specific 14）chemotherapy drugs to match a patient’s mutations in their own DNA—leading， in some cases， to astonishingly high rates of remission.
In the past two decades， the drug industry and government agencies like the 15）National Institutes of Health have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to turn genetics from a research project into something real.