Today it was announced that the NHS would be mapping the DNA of cancer patients (with their consent) to be stored and used by researchers. Which on the surface seems to be a perfectly sensible thing to do.
Of course there are those who are concerned with the privacy issue of the data being stored. Which is fair enough – any large storage of data like this is subject to privacy issues, and there are genuine fears that the data may be made available to private companies with no interest in health research.
Amusingly one of the comments was that the data would be made anonymous by removing any personal data from the data made available to researchers. Amusing because with the most personal data and ultimate means of identifying individuals is the DNA sequence itself – nothing can be more fundamental in identifying an individual than their unique DNA sequence.
On a more serious note, it is effectively impossible to make this kind of data completely anonymous. To be of any use the data in this database needs to include more data than just the DNA sequence – such as disease(s), treatments used, outcomes, etc. Whilst this may not be useful in identifying every individual taking part, it may well be enough to identify individuals with rarer combinations of disease and circumstances.