A computer system being designed by scientists at Harvard University could help unlock the secrets of asthma, but will it violate people’s privacy in the process? The system will scan the private medical records of about 2.5 million patients in nearby hospitals, looking for commonalities among the DNA of asthma sufferers. (The Boston Globe)
Harvard researchers say the project won’t run afoul of any state or federal information-security guidelines. But the online journalist Declan McCullagh proposes a solution that could keep the scientists from upsetting privacy advocates: Let individual patients decide whether researchers may have access to their data. (Politech)
