In an article on MedPage.com, Senior Editor John Gever reviews a recent study published in Science by Yaniv Erlich, of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass., and colleague. Erlich and colleagues were able to identify the full names of 5 out of 10 participants in a Utah-based genomic research project using free, publicly available internet tools. The researchers noted various limitations of the study, but nonetheless it made the NIH aware of vulnerabilities in privacy protection of participants in genomic research. Erlich’s study even led to the National Institute for General Medical Sciences to move participant data that was previously public to a “controlled access” site. To read the full article on MedPage.com, click here.
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