An open-source genetic information repository that has subsisted on crowdsourced contributions will shut down next month, partially to protect its user base from the threat of rising authoritarianism, its founder has announced.
OpenSNP was originally launched 14 years ago and was designed to allow web users to publish the results of their consumer DNA tests (of the kind you might get from 23andMe). Users can post their own genetic information from commercial consumer tests, and the information can then be used for a variety of purposes, including the betterment of scientific research. On its site, OpenSNP notes that users can “publish their test results, find others with similar genetic variations, learn more about their results by getting the latest primary literature on their variations, and help scientists find new associations.”
Now, that’s all coming to an end. The founder of the project, Bastian Greshake Tzovaras, wrote on his personal blog on Monday that the project will be shut down on April 30th and all of the data associated with it will be deleted. He added that he was troubled by the changing political tides sweeping the globe and that he worried that law enforcement agencies for undemocratic governments would abuse the data he had provided:
Across the globe there is a rise in far-right and other authoritarian governments. While they are cracking down on free and open societies, they are also dedicated to replacing scientific thought and reasoning with pseudoscience across disciplines. In the US, medicine in particular (alongside climate change) has been targeted by removing trustable source to replace them with the crackpot theories of those in power. All while large corporations that are aligned with those governments are strip-mining and polluting our digital commons and strain our open culture infrastructures – such as free & open software repositories, Wikipedia and others – at the same time.
Tzovaras concluded: “Which is all to say: The risk/benefit calculus of providing free & open access to individual genetic data in 2025 is very different compared to 14 years ago. And so, sunsetting openSNP – along with deleting the data stored within it – feels like it is the most responsible act of stewardship for these data today.”
The organization’s announced closure comes at the same time that 23andMe, the gargantuan corporate DNA giant, is in the midst of finding a buyer for its own huge genetic database. The disturbing privacy implications involving the commercial DNA industry have always been stark but now things are looking pretty bad indeed.
“I’ve been thinking about it since 23andMe was on the verge of bankruptcy and been really considering it since the U.S. election. It definitely is really bad over there [in the United States],” Tzovaras told 404 Media. “I am quite relieved to have made the decision and come to a conclusion. It’s been weighing on my mind for a long time.”
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