A number of top scientists have allowed their DNA to be posted online in order kick start a project that hopes to eventually have more than 100,000 genetic profiles on the Internet.

Steven Pinker, the prominent Harvard University psychologist and author, Esther Dyson, a trainee astronaut and Misha Angrist, an assistant professor at Duke University, have sent a piece of skin to the project at Harvard University and agreed to have the results posted on the Internet.

The Personal Genome Project aims at challenging the conventional wisdom that the secrets of our genes are best kept to ourselves. The big idea is to speed medical research by dispensing with the elaborate precautions traditionally taken to protect privacy.

If more genetic information can be made open and publicly available, nearly everyone agrees, the faster research will progress. The boffins have volunteered to have their genetic information posted on the Internet along with photographs, their disease histories, allergies, medications, and ethnic backgrounds.

It is not known what the ramifications of having one's genetic information in the public will be. For example, the people in the data base could be refused health insurance on the basis of what is found out.

More here.