Bill of Health blogger Dov Fox was featured in a recent National Geographic article on genetics and genealogy.
Dov Fox, an assistant professor of law at the University of San Diego who specializes in genetic and bioethical issues, told me that it’s only a matter of time before genetic genealogy leads to lawsuits regarding fidelity, paternity, and inheritance. But it’s unclear, for now, how the law will handle those cases.
Here in the U.S., there aren’t any federal privacy statutes that would apply, Fox says. The U.S. Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), passed in 2008, says that health insurers and employers cannot use an individual’s genetic information to deny medical coverage or to make employment decisions. But genetic genealogy doesn’t have anything to do with medical risks. That means lawyers will have to get creative in how they present their cases.
“What happens often with advances in science and technology is that we try to shoehorn new advances into ill-fitting existing statutes,” Fox says. So genetic genealogy cases might hinge upon laws originally written for blackmail, libel, or even peeping Tom violations.
For more, read the full article here.