Protecting presidential DNA

Excerpts from the Globe's blog on the Boston-area medical community.

Can you picture a future when some political operative swipes a presidential candidate's strand of hair, decodes its genetic data, and predicts mental or physical danger based on the analysis?

Bioethicist George J. Annas and neurologist Dr. Robert C. Green of Boston University School of Public Health can.

Two months before Barack Obama takes the oath of office, the two prominent leaders are calling for ground rules on disclosing personal genomic information in the next presidential campaign.

"By then, advances in genomics will make it more likely that DNA will be collected and analyzed to assess genetic risk information that could be used for or, more likely, against presidential candidates," they wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine.

There are two good reasons for candidates to make their genomes off-limits, Annas and Green said. First, presidents deserve some privacy. "There is some legitimate public interest in the president's health, but there also is some privacy that even a president should have," Annas said in an interview. "If for no other reason, I want my president to get all the medical help he or she needs without going through, 'What would the public think if I go to a doctor, especially if I seek mental health care?' "

Then there's the fact that no one really knows what someone's genes will act for the next four or maybe eight years, from cancer risk to Alzheimer's susceptibility.

"We still can't learn a lot from these genomes, but we could have a tremendous amount of information that people are going to over-interpret," Annas said. "We're going to need some scientists who are nonpartisan to authoritatively tell the public this is meaningless."

Better yet, the candidates can preempt the process. They can pledge not to disclose their information or use their opponents'.

Even in an age of negative ads and viral innuendo, it's not all bad, Annas and Green wrote.

"The threat of genetic McCarthyism provides us with an opportunity to engage in a public dialogue about the limitations and complexities of using genomic information for decisions about life and health including voting for our president."

ELIZABETH COONEY