Delegates at October’s UN biodiversity summit in Yerevan arrived with an awkward number in their briefing papers. The Cali Fund, created two years ago to collect a share of profits from users of genetic sequence data, had received only $6,000 against an expected $1 billion a year.
Most people might assume that the health information on their phone is protected the way their medical records are. It is not.
In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) banned a data broker called X-Mode Social from selling sensitive location data, charging that the company sold precise phone location data that could be used to track visits to reproductive health clinics, addiction treatment centers, and other sensitive sites.
In a landmark 2013 decision, Maryland v. King, the Supreme Court upheld mandatory DNA collection from arrestees as part of booking procedures, likening cheek swabs to fingerprinting. But 13 years later, renewed public concern about genetic privacy seriously undermines the assumptions underlying King.
A recent South African court judgment on pseudonymized school examination results has quietly opened a new and unexpected front in global debates about data protection and health research.
The Health Law Policy, Bioethics, and Biotechnology Workshop provides a forum for discussion of new scholarship in these fields from the world’s leading experts. The workshop is led by Professor I. Glenn Cohen, and presenters come from a wide range of disciplines and departments. Harvard graduate students may register to take the workshop for course…
The digital transformation of health care is advancing at unprecedented speed. Artificial intelligence (AI), mobile health apps, and telemedicine promise to enhance more accurate diagnoses, streamline care delivery, and expand access to health services worldwide.
Developments in neurotechnologies, which interface with one’s nervous system to monitor, stimulate, or modulate neural activity in the brain, are progressing at a rapid rate.
After Part 1 of this series was published, 23andMe dropped its bid for an independent customer data representative and agreed to the appointment of a privacy ombudsman.
Even with so many major headlines competing for attention last month, it was hard to miss the news that 23andMe had filed for bankruptcy.
