Genomic Data, Dating, and the Limits of Recreational Testing
The use of genetic tests for anything other than basic research at this point, and for identifying a handful of known, monogenic diseases or pharmacogenomic risks, is often an abuse of the science, and in many cases actually pseudoscience. If we seek to free up, disseminate, and remunerate individuals fairly for the use of individual data in science as we certainly should, then misinformation and puffery about apps that allege to provide unscientific information based upon genetic data are harmful to legitimate business models, and risk undermining the emerging market for genomic science and technology.
Dozens of scientific fields have been undermined in their infancy due to overselling pseudoscience to consumers. This has become increasingly risky in the genomics field with the proliferation of dubious lifestyle and health advice based upon consumer genetic testing but based upon incomplete or missing science.
By contrast, the current best use-case for EncrypGen’s Gene-Chain is as a means of storing and sharing your genetic data from direct-to-consumer testing for use in the needed basic science. There is tremendous value in that, and there is a huge market for it to the tune of several hundreds of millions of dollars per year. As well, there are dozens of fine apps that can give you interesting insights into that data as well, but there are hundreds that are simply worthless as well. We should be very wary of the claims being made by purveyors of such apps. Recently, the announcement of the Digid8 app meant to provide insights into dating based upon genetics pushes the boundaries not only of the limits of science but of ethics. As a number of critics have already suggested, it smacks of eugenics.
Eugenics is the discredited theory that we can select for breeding stronger offspring, not solely based upon “race” or ethnicity, but based upon a plethora of other characteristics. Currently, blood tests can tell us if we are prone to pass on specific, usually monogenic genetic diseases, like Tay Sachs, but the state of the science is definitely not yet to the point of doing much better via genetic testing. Not only incomplete and not ready for prime time, it is pseudoscience because the heritability of “desirable” traits is far more complex and so far from being understood, and the dangers of polygenetic diseases similarly inscrutable so far, that attempting to use what little we do know for dating is not only unethical but reckless.
Imagine you’re someone with a recessive disease gene, and you are a bit lonely and have resorted to dating online to find some company, and your use of such an app has basically flagged you for having such a gene. Firstly, knowing you have the gene is useful to you if and when you do decide someday to have children, but for dating, who cares? Genetics is not beneficial for finding people you might like to date, or even who you may love and spend your life with, and by the time you have met and decided to make a family with such a person, discovered through any means OTHER than genetics, you can use readily-available medical means to make the choices in an educated way. An app purporting to help find a date based upon your genetics. This will only serve to perpetuate myths, serve to stigmatize and ostracize, and provide a lot of irrelevant and incomplete information for the purposes of human companionship and love.
All of that is quite beyond and beside the point that it could well also promote racist behaviors as well. Eugenics is famously associated with the naive and erroneous theories of Francis Galton as perverted and adopted by the Nazis and others for the purposes of genocide. In the US, eugenics led to significant, embarrassing and at times horrific social and personal harm as well. Ultimately, modernizing eugenics by referring to genetic data, which remains scientifically incapable of assisting its aims, is a tremendous ethical minefield. Aside from this, it cheapens the complex and mysterious realm of love and human relationships.
The ways that people select their mates certainly include outward appearances of general health, but those are only part of what draws people together. Making healthy children is so far beyond our abilities to select for based upon standard medicine, much less genetic medicine, that suggesting you can provide useful information for that for the purposes of a dating app is deeply disturbing, likely to be misused and poorly understood by ordinary consumers, and based on such incomplete science that it is unethical. Sure people already make such choices, also often based upon incomplete evidence, so doing so under the guise of science is only going to confuse people and provide poor information at this point. Right now we are still very early in genomic science, need to gather and assess so much information yet, that providing anything useful medically is still rudimentary.
Because the complexities of human love and relationships far exceed the poorly understood boundaries of science and medicine, selling a service like this for such a purpose is, speaking as an ethicist, wrong.
David Koepsell is an entrepreneur, author, philosopher, attorney, and educator whose recent research focuses on the nexus of science, technology, ethics, and public policy. He has provided commentary regarding ethics, society, religion, and technology on: MSNBC, Fox News Channel, The Guardian, The Washington Times, NPR Radio, Radio Free Europe, Air America, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the Associated Press, among others. He has been a tenured Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Technology, Policy, and Management in the Netherlands, Visiting Professor at UNAM, Instituto de Filosoficas and the Unidad Posgrado, Mexico, Director of Research and Strategic Initiatives at COMISION NACIONAL DE BIOETICA in Mexico, and Asesor de Rector at UAM Xochimilco. He is the co-founder of EncrypGen, Inc., the world’s first blockchain-based platform for genomic data exchange.
