Radar and Speed Camera Apps

20 years ago I worked above a garage in Manchester. The owner was a young man who liked fast cars, but in Britain the roads are monitored with cameras and speed traps making it easy to lose your license through the points deduction system.

My boy racer friend had a solution however, on the rear view mirror he had a radar detection system. These systems were illegal to use, but not to own, so although visible to a passing police officer there was little they could do about it.

20 years on the technology has improved. Now for 6 euros you can download Radardroid, it sits in your smartphone and informs you when you are getting close to a speed camera or radar. This App sends a visual and sonic signal to warn you, so you can slow down and avoid fines and potentially losing your license.

To think it used to be like this!

Modern technology means less places to hide

There are many systems available. Some like Radardroid are openly helping you to avoid abiding by the law, but others market themselves as driver help tools. They let you know when there is a traffic jam ahead, bad weather or a radar by describing them all as ‘risk zones’. These systems have even been endorsed by some European governments and car manufacturing companies are starting to put the technology directly into their cars.

One problem remains however, in some countries the use of this technology is prohibited. Germany and Switzerland enforce bans on such technology, something that was easy with older systems that could be spotted from outside the car. But what about if it sits within your phone. How can a sovereign state stop people driving on their territory with an App in their phone? Will they stop cars that are factory fitted with the technology from crossing their borders?

I doubt that enforcement will be possible, and this highlights just one of the problems of the management of a single market across different sovereign countries. Technology transcends geographic boundaries, as the internet buying of banned products has proved.

And this leads me to my final question, does this mean that people only abide by the law because they think that they might get into trouble if they don’t? What are the ethical implications of the marketing and endorsing of such products? If this process continues many laws will become obsolete as technology finds ways to avoid being caught.

In Italy you have to pay to use the motorways, so you get a ticket when you enter, that you present when you leave and pay. On some motorways they have introduced what they call a tutor. It is old school technology, the ticket has the time you enter stamped on it. When you leave the time is registered again. If you cover more distance than is possible while remaining within the speed limit you get a fine. A simple A to B calculation that has dramatically cut deaths on my local motorway.

If you are interested in reading more about ethics in technological innovation take a look at my work blog.

Sequencing the genome of unborn babies

As a follow on from my post about genetic testing last month, I would just like to point community members towards a story that is just breaking here in the US.

The New York Times carried a story on its front page on 7th June in which it reported that an unborn baby’s DNA was sequenced with 98% accuracy using just the mother’s blood and father’s saliva. The testing was done when the fetus was 18.5 weeks old. The accuracy was tested after the baby was born with a full sequence conducted on blood taken from its cord. A second experiment involving blood taken from a mother much earlier in the pregnancy (8 weeks) showed similar results although slightly less accurate.

non-invasive testing of a fetus now possible

In purely practical terms the authors point out that this system of testing for genetic disease is completely non-invasive, and this will save the lives of many unborn children. Presently amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling are the preferred means for conducting tests for genetic disorders, but these techniques lead to the loss of the baby in about 1% of all cases as they both require the insertion of a needle.

The ethical implications of such a breakthrough are being widely discussed however. Much of the debate revolves around the idea that parents may choose to abort a fetus because it may not carry the traits they desire, and not only in terms of possible genetic diseases. We all know about the problem of female fetus abortion, and here we are introducing an entire matrix of more or less desirable features. There is also a serious problem of false positives, as some mutations were missed in the experiment and other positives given that at birth were found not to be present.

An argument that recurs involves the identification of diseases that may affect the individual in late life such as dementia. What kinds of decisions are parents of unborn children likely to make if they are told that it carries a mutation in a gene that raises its chance of getting cancer, or dementia or any other typically later life problems?

In this world of information however I imagine that there will soon be a market for such tests in the style of 23andMe, and as the price comes down many people will want to see the probable health future for their unborn children, as well as whether they will be tall or short, blond or brown or have blue eyes. This will have practical consequences for society.

If the model follows the existing 23andme path of offering statistical analysis of the chance of developing diseases in life the problem becomes even more complex. What might the effect be of telling the parents of an unborn child that it has a 40% increased possibility in developing for example Alzheimer’s disease? How can these statistics be analyzed and how will they be interpreted?

And what might the consequences be for an otherwise healthy fetus that finds herself caught up in statistical gambling?

Home genetic testing, pros and cons

Recently I have been getting interested in home genetic testing. I have written a few articles about this matter, including a 3 part post on the Bassetti Foundation website about a conference that I attended a couple of weeks ago at Harvard University.

The speaker at the conference was Anne Wojcicki, CEO of the world’s largest commercial genetic company called 23andMe. They offer a kit that you spit into and send back, then they analyze 4 million variables and you check out the results online.

Recent technological advancements have brought the price down beyond belief. What cost $100 000 a few years ago and took months cost $1000 last year and now $300  and can be done while you wait.

What they call Next Generation Genetic Testing has meant that the analysis has become incredibly more intricate, where as a few years ago they analyzed a few thousand proteins, they can now do millions, so if you already had your genome sequenced a few years ago you might want to re-do it to gain ever more information.
A strand of genomeAs I said I went to this conference with the CEO from 23and Me. They are a relatively new company but have the majority of the market share in DNA genetic analysis. The CEO very much presented her organization in business terms, but continuously highlighted the research they conduct in looking for cures for new diseases. They have amassed an enormous database and can conduct statistical analysis on Gene mutations in a few hours that only a few years ago (or without them they argue) would take years.
So what do they actually provide you with for the money?

Results are viewed online, and consist in various types of analysis presented as bar charts, pie charts and statistics. So one line of interest is where your Genes come from, for example how much of you is from Africa, Asia, Europe or elsewhere. How much of you is Neanderthal.

Then we get into the interesting stuff about how your genes relate to your parents, who are you most like.

Carriers and sufferers of diseases learn about their mutations, so if you have or are carrying a genetic disorder this information is also presented.

Then we move onto risks for the future. What percentage rise in risk do you have in your genes for developing certain diseases? Maybe you have a 20% rise in risk of developing Alzheimer’s or getting breast cancer. Here we are moving out of the present and world of scientific analysis and into the world of risk.

A world of interesting information and probably very useful in many cases and just a bit of fun in others, but I would like to raise some issues about the above.

No doctors are involved in giving this information, an individual reads their results online, so one of my reservations is about interpretation. What does a 20% rise in risk of breast cancer mean? How does an individual react to such news? What can or will they do? Also in terms of a negative result what are the effects? I have reduced risk of contracting breast cancer so I skip my mammogram for a few years, after all I am at low risk.

And what if I discover that I have some kind of genetic disorder? Well should I tell my brothers? Maybe they have it too. Do I have the right to tell them? Or am I obliged to tell them? Do they have the right to know or indeed the right not to know?

And ancestry, what if I discover that my father is not the man my mother is married to?

Then as a concerned scientist I start thinking about the data, and discover in the contract I signed (without reading because it is 10 pages long) on the internet gives the company the rights to distribute my genetic information to other research organizations. OK all in a good cause but are they going to make the information non traceable? Is that even possible when such an amount of intricate information is involved? Probably not say the scientists at Harvard.

I am not saying that 23andMe are doing anything wrong at all, their database must be a great resource for science and particularly medicine, possible benefits should not be underestimated and I am sure that their hopes and aims are all pursued in good faith, but I wonder if such a database should not be independently regulated. At present these types of operations are practically unregulated in the US, and maybe this should not be the case. Technology is moving ahead at an incredible rate in this field and nobody can say what this material will reveal, to whom and for which purposes. I note on the video that Christopher linked on his post about Google that they are one of the company’s biggest investors, and as they are a corporation specialized in data collection that does not really surprise me.

Legislation has been passed in the US called GENA, whose aim is to protect individuals from unfair treatment from certain sectors on the grounds of genetic testing. It is not however definitive and as I say only covers specific areas of commerce such as health insurance and employment, but I am dubious about the power of the state to enact laws as quickly as needed. Lawmaking is a slow process in a fast moving world as the genetic testing debate has proved. Equally however we don’t want to slow down the pace of research due to regulation, as that too has serious consequences for individuals who might be looking for breakthroughs in certain treatments.

I fear though that if you pay for such a test and the results show a tendency towards getting a cancer of some sort, a health insurance company might accuse you of hiding or having access to information you should have disclosed, and make life difficult when it comes to paying for the health care you need or for your funeral (I don’t think life insurance is presently covered under the legislation).

Or that one day they might ask you to lick a stick when you go in to the broker to buy your holiday insurance or apply for a job. What do you think?