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Obviously health insurance costs may go up, or on a national scale one country could target a virus for it's enemy's population. Also, your rhetorical question

Obviously health insurance costs may go up, or on a national scale one country could target a virus for it's enemy's population. Also, your rhetorical question is a red herring. It isn't about secrecy it's about privacy.

yoavm 2y ago
If we don't want insurance prices to be tied to customers' health condition, let's make a law against that. I don't know how it is in the US, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're already using the results of bloods tests etc for pricing? Creating a virus to target another country sounds like sci-fi at the best case, or a conspiracy theory[0] at the worst case. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_bioweapons_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_bioweapons_conspiracy_...
- programjames 2y ago
  > If we don't want insurance prices to be tied to customers' health condition, let's make a law against that. That's not how private insurance works. It's entire purpose is to manage risk against unforeseen issues, not clearly foreseen but for some reason a protected class. With better data, you can separate people out better, which means everyone basically just pays their own medical expenses. You could nationalize health insurance, but that's a heated debate in America right now. > Creating a virus to target another country sounds like sci-fi at the best case It could be done, today, with the data 23&Me has helpfully supplied and a few thousand dollars. I don't know why you would try to argue this point. ----- You seem to be coming at this from an "every situation is a cooperative game" perspective. They're not. And in adversarial games, you need to limit the information other people have about you, even if you don't know how they will use it against you. So, even if I were wrong about how your DNA can be used against you, I would still be right about the need for privacy.

yoavm 2y ago

If we don't want insurance prices to be tied to customers' health condition, let's make a law against that. I don't know how it is in the US, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're already using the results of bloods tests etc for pricing? Creating a virus to target another country sounds like sci-fi at the best case, or a conspiracy theory[0] at the worst case. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_bioweapons_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_bioweapons_conspiracy_...

programjames 2y ago
> If we don't want insurance prices to be tied to customers' health condition, let's make a law against that. That's not how private insurance works. It's entire purpose is to manage risk against unforeseen issues, not clearly foreseen but for some reason a protected class. With better data, you can separate people out better, which means everyone basically just pays their own medical expenses. You could nationalize health insurance, but that's a heated debate in America right now. > Creating a virus to target another country sounds like sci-fi at the best case It could be done, today, with the data 23&Me has helpfully supplied and a few thousand dollars. I don't know why you would try to argue this point. ----- You seem to be coming at this from an "every situation is a cooperative game" perspective. They're not. And in adversarial games, you need to limit the information other people have about you, even if you don't know how they will use it against you. So, even if I were wrong about how your DNA can be used against you, I would still be right about the need for privacy.