Genetic data identifies a person permanently, so control over it must stay with them

The argument

The case for individual ownership of DNA starts from what genetic data is. Unlike a password, an address or a card number, a genome cannot be changed once it has been exposed. It identifies the person it came from for life, and it keeps identifying them after any consent they gave has been withdrawn. Proponents argue that information with that property cannot sensibly be governed by the ordinary rules for data that can be reissued or corrected, and that the only protection proportionate to a permanent identifier is a property-like right held by the person themselves. The argument is reinforced by the fact that a genome describes as well as identifies. It carries indications of susceptibility to disease, of ancestry, of relatedness, and of traits a person may not know about and may not wish to know. Proponents point out that whoever holds this record is in a position to infer things about the person that the person has not chosen to disclose, and to act on those inferences in contexts such as insurance, employment and family relationships. Ownership, on this view, is the mechanism that keeps the power to make those inferences in the hands of the person described rather than whoever happens to have obtained the sample. Proponents also emphasise that genetic data implicates relatives who never consented to anything. Because a genome is substantially shared with parents, siblings and children, a single person's disclosure exposes people who were never asked. A right vested in the individual at least locates responsibility somewhere identifiable and gives those affected someone with standing to refuse on their behalf. Without such a right, proponents argue, genetic information defaults to whoever collected it, and the person it describes has nothing but the terms of a consent form to rely on.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics argue that ownership is the wrong legal instrument even if the concern is sound. Property rights are made to be transferred, so a right to own DNA is in practice a right to sell it, and the people most likely to sell are those least able to refuse; a regime of privacy duties and use restrictions protects people without creating a market in their genomes. They also note that a genome is shared, so individual ownership gives each relative a veto over information that is equally theirs, which would make family medical history unusable. And because genetic research depends on pooling samples at scale, critics warn that assigning exclusive private rights would let a small number of holdouts block work that benefits everyone, including them.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Permanence argues for strong legal protection, but protection can take the form of duties on holders and limits on use rather than a transferable property right. [Rejecting P2] The inferences that matter are addressed more directly by prohibiting genetic discrimination in insurance and employment than by vesting ownership. [Rejecting P3] Data protection regimes already treat genetic data as a special category with heightened duties, so the ordinary rules are not the only alternative. [Rejecting C] Because a genome is shared with relatives, exclusive individual ownership assigns to one person a right over information that belongs equally to others.