DNA — how can you monetise the new gold?

Dr. David Koepsell has many degrees: in philosophy, law and science. He is also an author who has written extensively on data ownership, including biometrics and in particular on gene ownership. This last piece of scholarly research ended up being encapsulated in a book, Who Owns You? in 2009 whose arguments were also used in a high profile lawsuit taken by the American Civil Liberties Union against a company that had patented genes. The arguments proved successful and were eventually adopted by the US Supreme Court in the overturning of the practice of gene patenting. Not many people can claim to have helped change the law at this level.Gene sequencing is a relatively recent phenomenon. At the turn of the century a combined international effort by the scientific community came together to map the human genome in what was called the Human Genome Project. There are 3 billion base pairs that make up the human genome and most of them are the same from person to person. In terms of variants there is less than a 1% difference that makes people distinct people, with individual traits, strengths and sometimes diseases or medical conditions.Mapping the entire human genome was like taking a picture of Earth from the International Space Centre.“Since the first mapping, we’ve been zooming in, getting a better understanding of the different genes, trying to make sense of the complicated code.”Critical commercial popularity emerged in the years that followed where people could process their personal DNA to identify their heritage. Two large American companies, 23andMe and Ancestry.com, quickly established themselves as market leaders in this field, cornering the space and charging relatively small fees for these tests. What was not generally known initially was these fees for sequencing a person’s DNA were loss leaders; it cost considerably more to…