First, I just want to say that all this type of research (genome and stem cell) is very new to me. I don't want to sound like I have been living in a cave all these years it is just that I have found no interest in this type of research until this Fall when I started the new school year and as you could have imagine to my surprise when I started to look for new classes for the Winter term I stumbled across this BioPolitics and of course I took it. Just to give you a little bit of history as to why I just now got interested in this type of research is because my family,on my mom side, is just now being detected with heart disease and I am in fear of my kids of inheriting this disease. As for the book from the author Mike Fortun I am finding it extremely interesting especially the part on "deCode [was] lobbying Iceland's Parliament to allow the company to supplement its family trees with medical records gathered from the national health services." Now, I know that this can be called invasion of privacy from a Icelanders point of view, but in my case where we are just now finding out that my family has a heredity of heart disease this way of building a data base from a family tree could turn out to be very important and even life saving in my families particular case. To back up deCode it did mentioned that they would be using a sophisticated and secure encryption technique to keep all of Iceland's citizens medical records secure and that the decryption keys would only be held by local clinics and not some central authority to be on the safe side. Now, to me in my situation this could turn out to be an extreme advantage in fighting the heart disease that is inherited from my ancestors and I would be all for this type data base, but I can also see where the people that the data base is being built on would see that this is an invasion of privacy. Who likes outsiders digging into their family tree and post the results for more outsiders to look at? I know that I wouldn't, but like I have previously mentioned I would have something to gain from it. So, I guess I wouldn't be opposed to it as long as it help my family avert the heart disease that is passed down the family tree. Also, I just wanted to add that after reading the article "Frame That Gene" it says that whatever we turn out to be is already predetermined before it happens because it is in our genetics. I believe it a certain point in that our physical characteristics are but what we truly turn out be is truly up to us as an individual and our success, in what ever nature it may be, is all up to the individual themselves. We chose whatever we want to be and how we want to do things, such as our sexuality and whether we choose to obey society(a law biding citizen) or buck against society( an outlaw) to say that it is in our genes is a cheap cop out. Maybe just maybe I am wrong and my mind is open to any other possibility or explanation, but to say we were already a loser before we were born is not acceptable to me. We are all individuals and we are all in control of what we want to be in life!