I think you're missing an important way of looking at DNA. It is clear that most people view the details in their DNA as being specific, private information about themselves and want to have control of what can be done with it.

DNA is also shared, however. A relative can currently choose to reveal private information in their DNA that also reveals information that you consider private in your DNA. This is the way in which DNA has a shared or commons aspect.

My point is that the shared nature of DNA means we have to look outside of individual actions to preserve the privacy rights that many seem to want preserved. In other words, I shouldn't be able to use my DNA to reveal private information about anyone else.

Given that you leave DNA all over the place, we should really ask if DNA is indeed actually private. In many regards it seems less private than your facial features as I don't routinely leave my facial features on restaurant silverware.

DNA dies in a day.

That Dropcam stream Google flagged your facial fingerprint on...not so much.

Is there anything quite as shared as DNA? You share 99.xxx percent with everyone else. You share a significant portion with other species. Other living things.

Also, we can't conflate DNA and one's specific DNA sequence. It's like the majority of the code is GPL.

> Is there anything quite as shared as DNA?

Music for example. The same poool of musical notes in 100% of compositions. Just arranged in different ways, like DNA

Completely wrong analogy. Most genes sequences are completely identical between humans. The differences in genes for specific traits are marginal, percentage wise.

And everybody uses a microphone, guitar, bass, keyboard and some kind of cowbell. trebble clef, bass clef, verse, hooks, a chorus, tempo, allegro, presto, bits per minute... completely identical in many songs.

Hmm, I would have guessed differently but I was also an undergrad biology dropout :/ wasn’t concrete enough for me.

FWIW I can see where he was coming from.

This exact scenario is what I find to be a call to a fullness of individualism to be quite inappropriate. We are not just ourselves, but of our parents and grandparents, and of our children. And to forget our lineage is to forget ourselves, in part at least.