I feel like researching how DNA can be digitized and the various impacts could have ethical concerns with both researchers and their subjects. For the subjects, while I know they would give researchers their consent to extract their DNA for digitization, I feel like the risk of exploitation would be a massive breach of privacy. The researchers that conduct these tests could also face ethical concerns if their research gets involved in cyber crimes because it could compromise the integrity of their research and also become an invasion of their privacy as well.

While the intentions of this research are grounded in making positive scientific breakthroughs, I personally feel like there are too many ethical considerations that make it too risky to implement this research. Even if someone’s DNA is not seen as important, it is still critical and “the more critical aspect is the mere fact that once digitized, individual DNA can then be compromised, stolen and used by criminals for any purpose,” (Rizkallah, 2018). There absolutely needs to be more research on how to keep the digitized DNA safe before testing it out on people and lowering the risk on losing irreplaceable personal information.

Reference

Rizkallah, J. (2018, November 29). Hacking humans: Protecting our DNA from Cybercriminals. Forbes.com.

https: drive.google.com/file/d/17vZTrd3tyRkIuXtLfYKSeZypU7WpCkmM/view