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People I’m through the looking glass on poop DNA privacy. Follow me down the rabbit hole if you dare.
Your typical bowel movement contains about 20 milligrams of DNA, of which about 0.1% is your own. The rest comes from your food and your gut bacteria. https://doi.org/10.1373/49.7.1185
This DNA is very rich with personal information: your identity, health, diet, lifestyle and travel history. How do we protect it? https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2018.01835
Sewer DNA surveillance is not a future problem, it is happening now. There are legitimate public health applications for tracking viruses etc. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abc3799
DNA sequencing is a Moore’s Law technology. In a few years the cost will be negligible and the sequencers will be everywhere.
https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/DNA-Sequencing-Costs-Data
https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/DNA-Sequencing-Costs-Data
So how to we keep your ex-husband, your insurance company, your government or Facebook from using this data for evil? My first thought was to simply destroy the DNA.
This could be done pretty easily with high temperature or bleach. People could buy an “encrypted toilet” that physically destroys the evidence.
Two problems though:
1) You can’t always control what toilet you use.
2) This would also break potentially good applications like pathogen surveillance.
1) You can’t always control what toilet you use.
2) This would also break potentially good applications like pathogen surveillance.
Daily DNA pills are the answer. 100 milligrams of synthetic DNA sequences designed to look like random humans and random food.
The signal-to-noise would hide your identity and lifestyle. But the pill would contain no pathogen-like sequences, meaning those could be fished out and tracked.
Let’s say the global market for these pills is only a few million paranoid weirdos. We still need metric tons of synthetic DNA to meet that demand.
Who will be the first to get rich selling kilogram bricks of pure DNA?
I honestly believe the only reason people aren’t taking this more seriously is that they don’t want to look like maniacs who rave about poop on twitter.
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