 Now, this is a little bit loud, I think, because can you hear me OK in the back? Good, OK. Welcome to the panel discussion. Now, we're running a little bit late, so I'll try and get up a little bit of time by running through these slides as quickly as possible. We're going to talk about ethical issues in the social application of DNA, because it's very, very topical, especially with the advert of Boxkin Girl, Golden State Killer, and so on. And we have a wonderful panel made up of Debbie Kennett, Barbara Ray-Venter, Mike Mulligan, and Donna Rutherford. Now, Debbie, you met this morning, is a genetic genealogist who's been around for a long time, as long as genetic genealogy has been around. And she runs the cruise DNA project and the cruise news blog. She's an author, and she also set up the ISOC Wiki, co-founder of the ISOC Wiki. Barbara Ray-Venter, you have just heard, is a genetic genealogist from California, who is instrumental in identifying the Golden State Killer, as well as Lisa. Mike Mulligan is ex of the Ancestry, has been a genealogist and a genetic genealogist for many, many years. And you have Donnie Gore Roots. And Mike, for many, many years, was product manager at Ancestry. Yeah, I launched Ancestry DNA in the UK and Ireland and kind of babysat that. Launched Ancestry DNA in the UK and Ireland and babysat it for five years. And then Donna Rutherford, again, another intrepid genetic genealogist from New Zealand. She has set up the group on Facebook, DNA Help for Genealogy, and is also going to be giving a presentation tomorrow morning. So please, can you give our panel a very warm welcome? Now, to start off with, I'm going to run through a little bit of a survey. And this was the paper that came out recently that Barbara mentioned in her presentation. And it is looking at the question, should police have access to genetic genealogy databases? And Barbara showed you these interesting graphs which shows you that people generally don't have a problem with the police accessing these databases if it's a violent crime, if it's children involved or if it's missing persons. But when it comes to nonviolent crime, you can see the orange bars there are only about half of what you see in the other ones. So I started a survey on Facebook last week in anticipation of this panel discussion. And I'm going to present these results to you now. It was an online survey, eight questions created using question pro posted on Facebook last week. And the final analysis was done yesterday. And these were the groups on Facebook that were used. You can see that I tried to target the ones with the highest number of project members. And after all of that, and it was also shared on other Facebook groups which would be unknown to me. So immediately you're seeing that this was a kind of throw as much mud at the ball and see how much of it sticks type of approach. And as a result, we got 617 responses from the 2,900 people that actually viewed it. You can see the various countries that participated here on the map. It all looked to be going swimmingly well for the first couple of days with America being two to three times higher than the UK. And then we got a surprise entrant from Sweden and they have now done more than 50% of the responses. So what we're looking at is actually a Swedish survey with a little bit of America and a little bit of the rest of the world thrown in. These are the actual numbers for the question, which country do you live in? And you can see the majority of people are actually living in Sweden. But there's 136 in America, 76 in the UK. If you look at the non-Swedish responses, you're looking at a 40% responders are American, 22% are British, 12%, 7% are Irish, 7% are New Zealand and 11% are Australia. Canada is 12%. And the age group was, most people about 33% were in the 60 to 69 year old age group. It didn't really vary that much between countries. So it was very, very similar in Sweden, very, very similar in UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada. Are you male or female? Again, about 63% were female, 36% were male. There was a slight preponderance of males in Sweden, a slight preponderance of females in the US. But usually it was about a third men and two thirds women, which kind of reflects how genealogy is practiced. So it wasn't away from what we would expect. About 10% of people had been a victim of a violent crime, but in the US the percentage was higher in the rest of the world. It was in Sweden, it was much lower. So you have about 8% to 9% in non-US countries and about 15 or 16% in the US. Have you done a DNA test for genealogical purposes? The vast majority of respondents said yes, about 96% have done a DNA test, only 4% have not. Are you reasonably comfortable with law enforcement agencies using your DNA data on-get match to help identify serial rapists? 85% of people said yes, 7% or 8% of people said no, and 6% of people were undecided. And there is a little bit of a difference then when you look at the country breakdown. The Swedes were the most happy to actually have law enforcement using their DNA. The other countries, UK, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, Australia were less happy. When it comes to, would you be comfortable with your DNA being used to help identify other unknown persons? We have adoptees, John Does, Jane Does that are unidentified people who have died, murder victims and soldiers, they all scored around about 90%. So 90% of people would be happy for their DNA to help identify adoptees, birth families, John Does, murder victims and soldiers. It drops down to 77% with donor conceived people, which is very interesting. And I don't really understand why that would be the case, but it is not hugely less than the other groups. And the one that is very marked is the nonviolent crime that mirrors the type of study that was done that Barbara showed in her last presentation. And then when you break it down between countries, it's again very, very similar across the different countries. Nonviolent crime, 51% of people would be happy to have that done in the other countries. In the US, they were quite conservative and said 42% would only be happy in the US. But in broad terms, there was a very consistent response across the various countries. The last question was very interesting. Does the use of DNA and genealogy combined by law enforcement agencies require additional regulation over and above what is already there? And the possible answers were no existing regulations that govern law enforcement activities are sufficient. Secondly, yes, additional regulation is essential. And thirdly, I'm not sure. Well, overall, 40% of people said additional regulation was essential. 38% of people said they weren't sure. And only 23% felt that current regulations were sufficient. And when you look at the breakdown between the countries, again, some differences started to emerge. The Swedish were the most uncertain. The Americans were the most happy with the current regulations. And other people felt that there was definitely a need. And almost 50% of people felt there was a need for additional regulations. So that was the result of the survey. The questions for the panel will include what conclusions can be drawn from these results, what are the main issues raised by police use of DNA, what additional regulation might be needed, both on an international, national and state level, and then achieving a balance between conflicting wants and desires. What's the role of ISOC and the genetic genealogy community in that? What is the role of industry? And how do we interface with the forensic genetic community? Do we need a set of global genetic genealogy standards for law enforcement use of direct-to-consumer DNA data? And where will we be in five years' time? Ladies and gentlemen, the panel will now reveal all. So let me start with you, Debbie. And if you can use the microphone, what do you make of those results? It's up. The first result that I was actually really surprised at was the low level of acceptance for donor-conceived individuals being able to use DNA testing, which is something I hadn't expected at all. And we've already got, and I've done quite a bit of work on this, and they're already well-established right to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child actually states that every child has a right to his identity and there's this established biological literature that states that the rights of the child in these situations actually supersede the rights of the adults. So that is contra to every, all current biological standards. It did make me wonder how many people among the responders had donated sperm as students. That's as well, so if they had a child who was donor-conceived and they hadn't told the child. So I think that's an interesting question to answer. The other thing that struck me with the survey is that 98% of people had already taken a genetic test. 96, yeah. Those of us who've already tested tend to realise that there's actually, your DNA is not really giving away much information. But the critical thing with the use of genetic genealogy in these situations is it doesn't just affect the people who've tested, it affects all of us because if we're happy to have our DNA on gender, maybe that our brother or sister is not happy to have their DNA on gen-match. But whether they like it or not, if we're on there, then their DNA is on there. And the people are affected and not just the people who are on gen-match, but the relatives of all those people. So once you start extending searches, you're involving everyone. So this is a question for everyone, not just people who've taken a DNA test and people who are on gen-match. Absolutely, and I think the fact that 96% of the responders that already DNA tested shows that it could very well be a biased sample. And that's a very real risk, because the Swedish contingent were a great surprise. And I think we know who to thank for that. But I'd like to say thank you to Sweden for doing a marvellous job getting this national survey available to the public. Barbara, what did you make of these results and any surprises there for you? Well, I was also surprised by the donor conceived, although certainly there is a concern about the fact that the donor conceptions were made with a guarantee of anonymity. And suddenly those people who were doing basically a service to the people who could not concede without this donation, they're getting knocks on the door, a high daddy, and not just from one or two, but many times from 15, 16 kids who, you know, have been using their DNA to find out who their parents were. So this one I think is creating a little more of a dilemma for people. No, not withstanding the rights of the child. It's obviously creating a huge problem for the donors. A clash of rights. Yes, exactly. Mike, did you have any first impressions from the survey results? Not surprised by the results. I think it is important to acknowledge there are a lot of biases in there because those Facebook groups are what we would call the hardcore genealogists by and large. It represents a subset of genetic genealogists. Also the people who took part in the survey were motivated and those motivations fed into that. You know, so I thought the number impacted by violent crime was higher than the national average, for example. And that would color. If you've been impacted by violent crime, you're obviously going to want anything brought to bear to catch a criminal. So I do think that there is a set of biases in there so I would avoid reading too much into it. But what I did notice within that, that the demographics information does track what we know about genealogy in each of those countries, where it's predominantly female, it's predominantly older, and also predominantly more conservative than the, if you like, the average population. It'd be interesting to see how these numbers would track if we did an average population size against these where people hadn't tested. So those are the kind of things that I did notice first time. Great. Donna, how about you? Is it still on? Yeah, it's on. The one that stood out for me was when we asked the genealogists if there should be some changes in the regulations and there was quite a high number of people that said they didn't know, because I think I fall into that. I don't know as a genealogist if I really have any clue about law enforcement regulations because it's not something that I've had to deal with in traditional genealogy. But I've come across it a lot in genetic genealogy, and in fact, I was actually asked by someone I had approached during a foundling case, and he'd come back to me and said, well, yes, we'd like to help you, but actually, are we working on a cold case here and are the police gonna come and knock on my door because we're ultimately solving a crime from 46 years ago, and should I go to the police and say, I've helped someone solve a cold case? And I didn't really have an answer for that, and because I don't think there's any regulations around what we're doing at the moment. But as a genealogist, I don't know if I, what we should have, if that makes sense. Well, staying with you, it kind of rigs us on to the next question, which is, what are the main issues raised for you about the use of our DNA by the police? For me personally, none whatsoever. I would divulge whatever police ever asked me. I have no issues with that myself, but I'm doing a lot of work for other people and helping other people, plus I've tested my entire family, and I don't know if I've asked all of them, every single one of the people that I've tested, if they realise that their DNA could be used by law enforcement. And I think it's really important that we consider asking people now before we use their DNA in public databases for sure. Mike, what do you think of that question? What are the main issues raised for you by the police use of DNA? I think it is one we haven't solved as a group, as a genetic genealogy group. I think the successes have coloured people's opinions, and it's important to say that most of those cases still haven't gone to trial. These people have the right to presume innocence. There is, and this brings up other things, like this was a very American case. We know that the legal systems in the US and in the UK and Ireland Valley in Europe are actually very different systems. And so what, for example, had any of those cases come to light, I mean, I actually found that they'd matched somebody who lived in Germany, whether the rights that they crossed boundaries. So we have situations that we've had what appear to be successful, and I should point again, appear to be successes, which is people say, that's great, we caught a killer. But there are papers you could take from PLOS today to show you how you can hack-jet match to fake that data. And we wouldn't necessarily be aware of them until it's too late, in which case we could have ruined some innocent person's life. So we are by no means equipped to tackle these issues. So am I happy in these cases that it has seemed to make successes? Yes, I would be happy if it is the right person. But at the same time, there are larger issues which I do not think we've answered. Many of the sorts of barbaric rates, and she said that these questions are answered, I would argue they're not. Definitely not if you take them beyond the United States. But jet match is not a United States database. There are people in it, as you've seen, people in it from all over the world. Now it is governed by the laws of the United States. So we are in a very uncharted territory, and whilst I think there's general support for catching criminals, I think when we go down a few years down the road, and we can do more with this data, then we're gonna be asking a lot more questions. Barbara, what were the issues raised for you by the police use of DNA? Well, I personally think that it's actually a good use of the DNA. Most of these people who've been in the news as being court recently, they were on nobody's radar. They were gonna go on living a nice old life. The Golden State Killer was gonna keep on mowing his lawn and yelling at the neighbors. And various of these other folks who've now been caught, they were never ever gonna come to justice. I don't think that, well, obviously any system can be hacked, but in these kind of situations, it doesn't matter if you go into jet match and you hack the data. We're not actually using that to identify the person and bring them to justice. There's subsequent testing that's done and granted it's probably not stuff you can do in Europe, but we can do it in California, which is doing the surreptitious DNA and comparing that DNA with what they have and code is already on the person from the sample that we've been testing. So we've got proof that that person is in fact who we say they are and that they are in fact, you know, the alleged Golden State Killer. So I don't think that hacking the database is gonna do any good. Yes, you might identify somebody incorrectly, but it's gonna be very quickly realized. I think it's also, no, I think there's very important point and I was gonna make another point and it's gone out of my head now. So instead, I'm just gonna pass on to Debbie and just say, what are the issues raised for you by the police use of DNA from jet match? Well, first of all, it's not just the question of police use of DNA because none of these cases have been solved by DNA alone. It's DNA combined with genealogy, with social media records. And I think one of the things is that a lot, all of these cases are American cases and Americans have a very different attitude to privacy than us and they have a lot of quite personal records that seem to be very easily accessible so you can go to these sites like being verified and you can look someone up, you can get their address and their telephone number, I think even their mobile phone number and you've got the 1940 census which has living people in it and the victories which list the entire family. So we can do this sort of search in the UK and Ireland but in a different way, you know, okay, we've got public in the UK, we've got birth and marriage and death records so that are publicly available and you can construct a family easily but not the same type of records. So I think the argument is not just about DNA but also about what genealogical records should be available. So in Ireland it was decided to restrict the birth and marriage and death indexes to, say, 100 years for birth certificates. Yeah, birth certificates, birth certificates, marriage certificates. So one of my fears is that as a consequence of this, we may end up with lots of genealogical records being shut down out of fear. But my other concern is the use of surreptitious DNA. So I'm happy, I don't mind police using, you know, using GEDMATCH but the thought of the police having carte blanche to follow anyone around police who could easily make a mistake and panic and shoot someone and just to get their DNA to test against an unknown sample. And it's fine if that is the person who was the criminal but it's a gross invasion of someone's privacy if they are not, if they're innocent and they are subjected to this, that degree of intrusion into their life. I think that raises a very interesting, it raises a very interesting- Have you followed around for two days? That's not so- They don't know that. Well, they've called surreptitious. They made it if they get shot, by mistake. Well, it does raise a very good point and that is the difference between the different countries. Different countries have different regulations and it creates a very big problem because how can you have regulations that can apply across a variety of different countries? And that is the next question, what additional regulation might be needed and is it needed on an international level, a national level, a state level? What can we do with Mike? Well, just before I get onto that- Sure. Somebody put this to me and I didn't actually know how to respond so maybe I'll just put that out there for people to think about. And they asked me how, this was some time ago when it first came out, how I comfortable was. And I said on a personal level, knowing what I know, I'm reasonably comfortable. He said, well, if you take those numbers, okay, then bring it back to the survey. If 90% odd people, the most efficient way for us to help law enforcement is to mandate everyone gets tested at birth. Now, if you ask that question, do you want to get tested at birth, your numbers will go straight down. So I think people answer the abstract, it's okay provided I'm nothing. So I think this is an abstract thing that when it becomes very real to you, I think people will have different ads. That's a good point. But in terms of additional regulation, I think this kind of leads very nicely into that in that we are at a point where we don't even know where we would start this regulation. And this isn't a genetic genealogy question, it's not even a genomics question. When you see the likes of the data that can be gained from Facebook and social network sites and how we're struggling with that, this is just another instance of that. So do I personally think we need regulation? Probably. Do I know what that would even look like? I haven't a clue. It's a really difficult question. I don't think we're gonna solve it anytime soon. But I do know, in simple cases, had any of the suspects being identified being in different jurisdictions? For example, the use of surreptitious DNA would have been useful. It's worth pointing out that GenMatch has not been proven in a quarter's way of doing it. That's why CODIS was brought into the mix because that is known to work. So if it goes across jurisdictions, my data is on ancestry, my data is on 23andMe. If those were subpoenaed and used, does that even apply to me? Well, in a way, the use of GenMatch is to just generate investigational leads. It's a clue. It's actually not admissible in court by and large. Maybe Barbara, you could talk to that because there's no chain of custody. So you cannot be guaranteed that the person that gave the test is the results belong to him because there isn't a chain of custody that follows it all the way through ancestry or family tree DNA or my heritage. So it's very important to realize that the work that Barbara does generates investigational leads that are then acted upon using the usual forensic routes, which means following something, getting that discarded DNA, bagging it, chain of custody, bringing it to the evidence room or whatever, and having that chain of custody logged so that that is admissible in court. So the Golden State Killer, correct me if I'm wrong, if he is convicted, he will be convicted on the basis of the forensic DNA samples that were taken after he was arrested. Is that correct, Barbara? That's exactly correct. Yeah, there's no chain of custody with any of this until you do the CODIS testing after I've already pointed to somebody as being a good candidate for whoever it is which one to identify. And what do you think about the question of additional regulation? Where do you start? Well, of course, in the US, it's a little more complicated because unless it were a federal regulation, each state's got their own rules as to what can be done. Even with the use of CODIS, California is one of 12 states that allows familial testing. Some states you can do no searching at all in CODIS and others you can do first degree relatives. So just huge differences from one state to another. So very difficult to do regulations. There is discussion about doing that. I'm not sure what form it would take. There have also been some suggestions to somehow take people's DNA so that there can be some control over how it's used. Donna, additional regulations, what do you think? I just don't know. And I think that's one of those people that answered the question here that I don't know. I really don't know because I really don't understand law enforcement. It's not in the area I've been involved in. But I've probably got a question back to it. And I don't know if Debbie knows this, but what is one of the law enforcement community doing in the UK and Ireland about this? Are they looking ahead and saying, well, this has been working in the US. Is anyone going to be doing it here? And what can we do? What is the law enforcement going to do here? Are they looking at regulations? Well, maybe Debbie, you can answer that. I think it's difficult to even engage with the forensic genetic community. I would love to, but I think we haven't actually had the opportunity of having forensic geneticists apart from LGC. They presented one year at Who Do You Think You Are? But I'd love to see more collaboration between forensic genetics and genetic genealogists. Well, in the UK, we have something called a biometrics commissioner who is supposed to be in charge of all this biometric data. And there's also an ethics, probably called an ethics committee or something that it's supposed to provide oversight of new technology that's used. And in fact, Professor Mark Jobling at Estee University is one of the people who's on that committee. And we have sort of like national guidelines about how the police do things and how they use different types of data. So I think this would actually come under, there would be some sort of oversight from the biometrics commissioner or from this ethics committee about how and when these sort of searches were done. But they can only have jurisdiction over what goes on in the UK. And the thing is that these sort of searches affect everyone. So someone could be on GEDMATCH and it could be say a second puzzle who's identified in the UK. And then who has jurisdiction over that? If the police want to question that person, you know, the decision would be made by the police in America to do the search. So there are no boundaries really to these searches. So the decision made in one country can affect a decision in another country. And is there anybody, is there a genetic genealogist sitting on this bioethical? No, there is no. When do you think you might be? Yeah. Because we do need to have a presence and we need to have a voice at the table and we need to be part of these discussions, don't we? Well, I'm doing a presentation in January as a conference up in Manchester, which is two academics, but that's more of a DNA than the history type conference, but I don't know the other academics there. But the other thing I wanted to say was in terms of, I've noticed, looking into a missing person's talk, the different approaches in the UK police database, it's now 8% of the population are on there and it's the only database in the world where the number of people on the database is actually being reduced because if you've been cleared of a crime, your DNA has to be removed. In the UK, once they're arrested, they can have their DNA tested. In America, that's not the case and a lot of people, in one of the cases, it wasn't possible to take someone's DNA because it was considered a trivial offense, but it was okay for that person to have their DNA taken surreptitiously and that just seems completely illogical to me. If you're going to allow, why not just take the DNA of everyone on arrest because they're under suspicion and just make it all above board and legal? Barbara? Your statement actually isn't quite correct. Some states, including California, anybody arrested for a felony, their DNA is tested and there is actually a legislation being proposed to also require people just arrested for most about anything to be put into the database. We have no provisions for taking you out if you're proven to be innocent and there are several states that have similar kinds of legislation. Nevada has just amended their law. They do arrest DNA testing and what they have just done is they've now changed the rules so that they can now do retroactive testing so they're now in the process of DNA testing everybody who's in the prison population. So it's not correct that there's not DNA testing done on people who are resties or people who've been convicted. What was your statement? I guess, do you know which state it was? Okay, yeah. While you have the microphone, what role do you think we, as a genetic genealogy community, should play in trying to achieve this balance between what people want, 90%, 80%, want to actually have the police using the DNA and the uncertainty about is it going to be used safely and appropriately? How do we get that balance? And what role do we as a genetic genealogy community have in maybe helping to define regulations on an international, national and state level? Well, the poll that you showed just to correct something we said earlier is that in fact, it is people who are in the databases who have overwhelmingly said, yes, it's okay to use those steps. So I'm saying yes, 90% of the other people who've also done testing according to your poll are also in favor of using these databases. I think the main concerns are ethical concerns. Who was using these databases and how are they being used? Very clearly people want it to be limited to violent crimes and to certain kinds of victims. And so perhaps those are the things we should focus on in terms of doing regulations. Jetmatch has done an attempt at doing that. In fact, now to upload stuff to Jetmatch, you have to indicate that it's either your DNA or you have permission to upload the DNA or you are law enforcement trying to solve a violent crime or to identify non-vectin. So they're trying to do something like that. I think as the genetic genealogy community, we potentially need to have something similar in place for people who are in fact registered or certified genealogists. The being attempts to put something in place, I think it's been three or four years now where nothing has really gone has actually happened in that vein. I was at a group conference earlier this year where it was proposed that we really do need to do some kind of certification of the people doing this work. Right now, there is no certification for genetic genealogists. Two things were proposed. One was to do a certification through the existing certification procedures. I personally don't agree with that. I don't think that necessarily people who are really great at doing regular family history research are necessarily trained to do this kind of research or understand the issues. There was also a proposal to approach one of the forensic communities for their certification procedures and see if maybe we can do certifications through those. I think those are steps in the right direction for at least trying to try and regulate the people who are doing the work and make sure that they actually understand DNA, understand how to do this kind of work, because one of the big concerns, of course, is being false identification. Yes. I don't think that's going to happen because we do the, well, whatever you're allowed to do, you're allowed to do the surreptitious DNA or at least do after the fact testing if somebody isn't back to rest in. Mike, what role do you think industry has to play as an ex-industry professional? What role do you think industry might have to play and the direct-to-consumer companies themselves? What role would they play in maybe trying to navigate the moral maze? I know from my time in ancestry and also talking with my colleagues with other companies, they actually do take it very seriously. They don't get the credit for that. And now that I'm no longer in ancestry, I can say that. I have had so many times where I was told X, Y, Z feeds would just make life so easy and we could easily identify who our relatives are, et cetera. And the whole point is to respect the privacy of the test taker. That's first and foremost. And I think the industry, and I mean the testing companies, not necessarily GEDMAX, because that's essentially the guys putting their heart into it, but the companies themselves, they spend an awful lot of money trying to make sure that there was a mantra out of ancestry for many years. It's still there, I'm pretty sure. Privacy is a feature and privacy is a right. And you only get the chance to lose it trust once with the company. And all of the companies know that and they are aware that as soon as they lose the trust of this community, we will stop using it. And that means respecting anything you give them. So if you look, most of them now have a transparency report and you can go and look there and I used to read the Ancestry one regularly and every year they would produce one. The only law enforcement requests to Ancestry in the last five years were related to credit card fraud. They haven't had a DNA request for law enforcement. So the issue currently is a lot more talked about than reality. And as far as I know, the others have said they haven't had law enforcement requests. And you could argue, why do you need to, you can go straight to GEDNITE and it's like, Jesus, it's your hair under that. But they do take that seriously and I think they have seen since I left they've been going together to try and put together a set of common guidelines that they've been put. They're all coming from what I think is a very healthy place. But the person who takes the test, their rights are parliament and they should be protected in all cases. And I would argue, and I know it's got a lot of bad press, they used on the great service with GDPR. You know, a lot of people complained about GDPR but most people complained about GDPR because people have the extra work to make it work. You know, GDPR costs a fortune from all of the DTC companies in the last few years to make sure that they have a simple set of guidelines. And I can go on to any of those sites now and know I have a right to be forgotten and they will take down everything that happened. It also is the case and I'm singing out Ancestry and 23 Me in this one. They don't allow uploads. You can't do what Barbara did on Ancestry and 23 Me. It's a lot harder. You have to do a whole lot of things with this life. A really difficult process. You know, stopping uploads would actually change the landscape on this, dramatically. Yes, and that's what, yeah. So I would sort of call out in terms of 23 Me in Ancestry. I know Yannick's come up with this idea of signing. Signing, that may or may not happen. I think the interesting thing about the company signing them is if you go to the ones that don't allow uploads and in fact, if you go to all them when you go to download, they're very clear about making clear to you. If you download out of our system, all the privacy protection we granted you is gone. It's the Wild West. You are on your own. And that's something that I think that when I'm testing out at one of the major DTC companies, I do feel the sense that I'm quite safe there. Anything that's gonna happen, I will be notified by the amount of the chance to opt out. And all of them actually work when you sign up on an opt-in basis. Your matching is optional. There was a lot of pushback in Ancestry when they made matching opt-out and people would say, I don't want to do matching. Well, what's the point of uploading to matching? That's the point. There are people that are comfortable with that and we have to respect that. Yeah, yeah. What about the future of Privacy Forum? Were you involved in that at all? Was that a... It was something that I was aware was getting going but this is something that the industry themselves are aware that they need to be leading it because if they're not leading it, it will be left for them. And you know, this, we're at the tip of the iceberg in this. Law enforcement is the first. GINA is under attack by community in the US right now. If GINA goes, that's going to be a big tsunami. GINA is Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act which prevents insurance companies, health insurance, life insurance, using your DNA to adjust your premiums. Donna, do we need a set of global genetic genealogy standards for law enforcement use of our DNA? This is the one I said I didn't know. I don't know if we do. But because I don't really understand what law enforcement's part of it because I'm a genealogist in my spare time, I know nothing about law enforcement and I know nothing about what might happen if we don't have... I really can't foresee what will happen if we have regulations or if we won't have regulations. I can't quite get my head around it. But just to pick up on something that Barbara said, in terms of those of us who are genealogists and now genetic genealogists who are helping people to find biological parents, and at the moment there's no regulation around that. And I think that's, for me, is more important in the law enforcement side because I've found some biological parents for people. I'm an accountant who works in IT and does genealogy in my spare time. I know there's a lot of other people and probably people in the audience who have been finding biological people, biological family for people. But who's regulation us? Who's telling us we're doing it correctly? And who's making sure that we're giving the right information to these adoptees, foundlings, donor-conceived people? Because there are, you know, uphits and terrible stories of people doing it wrong. If we're doing it wrong, there's law enforcement doing it wrong. All the people who are doing it for law enforcement doing it wrong. So, you know, what bar proceed about is there's some accreditation for us before we start doing this? And should there be not just regulations around law enforcement, but regulations around all of us who are doing this work? For the right reasons, you know, we believe we're all doing it for the right reasons, but, you know, are we doing it properly and ethically? Very, very good point. And I think it's one that Debbie can address because Debbie has been working very closely with donor-conceived groups to try and produce some kind of guidelines or regulations or best practice tips. Yes, we've got some new pages in the ISOD Wiki now about donor-conceived individuals in the UK on searching and contacting relatives, which has actually done with somebody who's worked a long time in that community and has got a background in social work and some donor-conceived adults contributed to that. So, I mean, I think there possibly is a, we could produce some guidelines on behalf of ISOD, but I think it needs to be done at a bigger level than genetic genealogy. It needs to be a global initiative with involving forensic community, law enforcement, hopefully genealogists and genetic genealogists as well. But I'd also like to see some control over which genealogists are accredited for use by law enforcement. Because the thing, one thing that does concern me is the use of volunteers. So the DNA DOE project has something like 40 volunteers. We don't know who they are. We don't know how it's decided they're used. And quite often with those missing person cases, they become murder investigations. And it only takes one person to release some information and compromise the whole investigation. And if there's no accountability, so many things could go wrong there. And we've had cases of unethical behavior by genetic genealogists working on some of these cases anyway. Not Barbara, obviously, but there have been some unfortunate incidents which is actually, which gives our field a bad name, sadly. Well, we've run out of time. We only have five minutes before the next lecture. So in the last minute, maybe 10 or 20 seconds on where you think we'll be in five years' time. Well, I think within five years or 10 years, everyone is gonna have their DNA tested because I think that's the only fair way to, in a sort of national or international database, I think that's the only way to stop stigmatizing people or discriminating against people who haven't tested and everyone's involved. And then you haven't got the, I don't say much for getting me on some roll. Or we'll be in five years' time, Barbara. Well, I think I agree with Debbie. Also, I don't know what you do here in the UK, but at least in, I think in all of them. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Ireland. Ireland. I'm sleep deprived. I'm so sorry. Oh, oh, oh. In Ireland, well, in Europe in general, I don't know what to say. That you don't, oh, that everybody in all of, I think all 50 states does get tested at birth. And so there are actually your databases going back, I think at least 10 years, maybe longer. Depending on the state, some of them are still there. Some of them are accessible. Others are not accessible. And some of them, of course, they routinely purge the data. So actually, we have been testing everybody. This is the question of what's happened to that data. And I really agree, though, that we really need to be doing something about certifying people who are doing this kind of work. I think that's extremely important because you cannot have a leak. I mean, if you've got somebody who spills the beans about an unidentified doe and somebody reads about their missing person in the news as having been discovered as a motor victim, that's terrible. And so, yeah, you need some kind of regulation. Mike, where will we be in five years? Well, already genetic genealogy is a term is becoming old fashioned and irrelevant. It's genealogy, DNA is a tool. Five, 10 years from now, we will finally understand what genomics means. And I think that's something that perhaps we should start using. This is about genomics and what does that mean? It means if you look at some of the papers in the last year, genetic clustering will be allowed us to identify regions of the world with genetic susceptibility to disease, heart disease, lung disease, the health implications of genomics. You will be starting to use genetic testing the way you would use a blood test today. And based on your family trees, based on your family history, your doctors will be starting to able to tell you, by the way, you're from Donegal, did you know you've got this susceptibility to disease? It's already in some of the papers that are out there in the academia already. And when we get to the point where we've got 20, 30, 40 million people, and bear in mind, if you looked at genetic communities work, the first release of that in ancestry was based on 96% American population and they could identify me to be from South Donegal, just based on Americans. So it's a global kind of database. So it is powered by Americans today, but that'll become increasingly global. And we'll be able to pinpoint things about your genetic makeup way beyond your family history. And those are the implications of five years that we'll be having these big ethical conversations. Great, Donna, five years time. In five years time, I think when we start doing DNA tests, we're not going to have any problems trying to find our biological parents because it's going to be pretty obvious. If you test and you'll have close matches, you know, I know just in the last three years at my ancestry test, I had 32 fourth cousins and closer when I did my test January, 2015. I've got 270 or something. Now, if we keep seeing this exponential growth, we're going to have close matches and there won't be this, we're just going to cut down on the time from finding DNA to solving the crime really. It's going to happen quick. Well, thank you very much to the panel for your expertise and for your answers. I had hoped to take a few questions from the audience, but unfortunately we've run out of time. There will be other expert panel dealing with DNA privacy and data protection on Sunday. So if you do have questions, then we'll take them at that particular panel. But for now, please could you give a very warm thank you to our expert panel. Thank you guys. Thank you.