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Chinese researchers can access medical information from half a million UK GP records through UK Biobank, despite western intelligence agencies’ security fears (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 5 days ago by randomname@scribe.disroot.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2449681

Researchers from China are to be allowed access to half a million UK GP records despite western intelligence agencies’ fears about the authoritarian regime amassing health data, the Guardian can reveal.

Preparations are under way to transfer the records to UK Biobank, a research hub that holds detailed medical information donated by 500,000 volunteers. One of the world’s largest troves of health data, the facility makes its information available to universities, scientific institutes and private companies. A Guardian analysis shows one in five successful applications for access come from China.

For the past year, health officials had been assessing whether extra safeguards were needed for patient records when added to the genomes, tissue samples and questionnaire responses held by UK Biobank. Personal details such as names and dates of birth are stripped from UK Biobank data before it is shared but experts say that in some cases individuals can still be identified.

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[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Preparations are under way to transfer the records to UK Biobank, a research hub that holds detailed medical information donated by 500,000 volunteers. One of the world’s largest troves of health data, the facility makes its information available to universities, scientific institutes and private companies. A Guardian analysis shows one in five successful applications for access come from China.

What exactly is the problem? People voluntarily opt in to have their data used for research purposes and a quarter of those researchers happen to be Chinese. Names and birthdays are also stripped.

How much of this is also given to the Americans? Conveniently not mentioned despite American countries having a fetish for our personal data

[–] randomname@scribe.disroot.org 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

@Strayce@lemmy.sdf.org

@Flax_vert@feddit.uk

... indicating that [China's] BGI units’ “collection and analysis of genetic data poses a significant risk of contributing to monitoring and surveillance by the government of China, which has been utilised in the repression of ethnic minorities in China”. It also claimed “the actions of these entities concerning the collection and analysis of genetic data present a significant risk of diversion to China’s military programs”.

[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

And America doesn't do this?

[–] randomname@scribe.disroot.org 2 points 5 days ago

There are also articles about this. Feel free to apply the whataboutery also there. (s/ just to be safe, it would indeed be better to stop whataboutering and stay on topic.)

[–] Strayce 4 points 5 days ago

Total nothingburger. BioBank is a research dataset used for cohort studies. There's about 500k volunteers who contributed some genetic material, demographic and lifestyle information, anthropometrics and physiological measurements. It's mostly used to discern possible genetic and lifestyle factors for chronic disease. It's not like they're getting access to the whole NHS database and stealing DNA to build supersoldiers.