In the news: NIH blocks public access to DNA databases
The National Institutes of Health has blocked access to two anonymous patient DNA databases after discovering that a new method of data analysis was able to decipher the identities of the patients, the
Los Angeles Times reported
.
Databases containing anonymized information on 60,000 patients were taken off-line after a study revealed a new way to confirm the identity of a person in a pool of masked data if that person's genetic profile was already known, according to the report.