Google recently unveiled its most ambitious — and some say its most troubling — endeavor to date: the “Baseline Study,” which would collect genetic and body chemistry information in order to create a picture of the ideal healthy human.
Starting with a baseline of 175 volunteers, the company plans to use big data modelling techniques to catalogue biomarkers in order to determine whether there are predictable patterns in diseases and medical abnormalities. In doing this, there are hopes that proactive — rather than reactive — health care solutions could be created.
The Baseline Study represents another one of the Internet giant’s attempts to bridge the gap between science fiction and real science. In the four years since the lab opened, Google-X has announced developments into Google Glass, an augmented head-mounted display built into eyewear; Google Contact Lenses, which monitor blood glucose levels; an artificial neural network capable of speech and vision recognition; the Web of Things, which would integrate everyday objects into the Internet; and Project Loon, which would offer Internet service via a network of high altitude balloons.
The Baseline Study may be a workaround to existing privacy laws, which prohibit the direct searching and querying of personal medical data by non-medical practitioners or individuals without a right-to-know. Larry Page, Google’s co-founder, has stated publicly his opinion that privacy laws have inhibited the use of big data to effectively pattern-search for distinctive traits in human condition states.
It is speculated that “biomarkers,” or unique biological molecular structures, are present for every significant illness or mutation — similar to the biomarkers that are present in the development of cancer, for example. By identifying these biomarkers, tests can be developed that could offer an early warning to a litany of life-threatening or life-limiting illnesses or conditions. In one application of the possible results of this study, researchers would have a baseline to compare to in order to simplify the search for these biomarkers.
Google has yet to come forward with details for the study, but based on reporting from the Wall Street Journal, Google-X plans to compile its data through the collection of “bodily fluids such as urine, blood, saliva and tears” from its initial batch of subjects. Depending on the success of the study’s early rounds, the trial could be expanded to thousands of subjects. Information on how a subject processes nutrients and drugs, as well as the subject’s complete genome sequencing, biometric readings, family genetic history and genetic reactions to specific chemicals will all be recorded and anonymized by a third party before being released to Google. The Institutional Review Boards of Duke and Stanford Universities will also review and determine if Google’s intended use of the study information is legal and ethical.
Many have voiced strong concerns about Google’s attempts to map “perfect health.” As health is subjective and influenced by a person’s genetics, environment, diet, personal behaviors, and personal and cultural stresses, what would qualify as healthy for one person may not be healthy for another. What Google may be attempting to determine is what is the “median health” — or the middle of the health spectrum, if all humans were included — of society.
“My immediate question is, what does Google mean by that? Healthy for a six-year-old boy, or a 75-year-old woman? You’re injecting values about the range of humanity, right off the bat,” said Arthur Caplan, the director of the division of medical ethics at the NYU Langone Medical Center, to NBC News regarding Google’s announced attempt to determine what it means “to be healthy.”
“It’s a perfectly reasonable approach, but I wouldn’t do it under the ‘what it means to be healthy’ mission statement. Those are fighting words. The mother of a child with Down’s syndrome may consider her child perfectly healthy.”
Many, including Caplan, argue that genetics and body chemistry alone cannot predict health — although these elements can point to existing but unmanifested problems. A review of a subject’s psychological state and environment is just as important in predicting health as looking at his or her DNA.
More troubling, however, is Google’s track record of monetizing the data it collects. Google’s advertising network, for example, automatically tracks where a browser has travelled on the Internet and the results of searches the browser entered on Google’s search engine, then it return ads specifically chosen based on these observations. This creates a situation in which Google is creating profiles on its users without their consent and using it to influence users at a later date. This is the backbone of a network that yields roughly $50 billion per year in advertising revenue.
“When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content,” Google said, regarding its privacy statement.
While Google has indicated that it will not share its Baseline Study information with insurers, this does not preclude the notion that data from this study may appear in a future product that may be made available to insurers or to anyone else that could derive profit from its use. To justify its actions, all Google would have to do is make the argument that the distribution of the information served the public good. As Google is currently embroiled in litigation regarding whether the company is needlessly snooping into its users’ privacy, the Baseline Study has the potential to push the private/public data debate to its furthest extremes.
However, there’s still the possibility that Google-X could find something in this study that saves lives, making is more difficult to address issues surrounding privacy concerns and leading some to believe that — at least in this case — the ends may justify the means.
“You wonder if they’ll bring a fresh and different perspective, because this isn’t a stodgy academic project,” said Kedar Mate, vice president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. “The entry of a player like Google has the ability to stimulate the space — and break it out of the way things have always been done.”