Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
The collapse of the DNA testing firm 23andMe has not just sent customers scrambling to delete their data ahead of a sale.
It has led to the closure of another company: openSNP. Bastian Greshake Tzovaras launched the free and open repository in 2011 as a way for 23andMe users to share test results and find others with similar genetic variations.
Now he’s winding down the site for fear of how the data could be weaponised by the US government.
Greshake Tzovaras told Tortoise he was concerned about “a future where spurious genetic ancestry claims are used to strip people of citizenship or to deport them”.
He plans to delete all the genetic data held by openSNP, which has identified more than 7,500 genomes and is home to nearly 13,000 users.
