I don't understand where this principle "I have the right to measure my bodily functions and publish the results" is supposed to have come from. I'd never heard of it before and I don't see why it should be important: more important than the principle of avoiding harm to other people.
Presumably the principle "I have the right to measure my bodily functions and publish the results" would also allow you to publish anything you see or hear, since sight and vision are bodily functions. I don't see why that principle (which I'd never heard of before today) should override all the sensible rules we have about publishing various kinds of things.
> "I have the right to measure my bodily functions and publish the results"
It seems very natural to me. At least, more natural than being forbidden to do so due to the questionable practices of health insurers.
Let's move to a single bit of information. Do you have the right to publish the fact that you are colorblind? Or wether you suffer from "situs inversus" (your heart is on the right side). Or to disclose your own blood type?
Each of these bits of information reveal information about your genome, one bit at a time, thus they have medical implications to other members of your family. I find it abhorrent that somebody from my family could forbid me to disclose each of these bits of information, that I can measure about myself when alone at home. Thus, if I can disclose each of these bits individually, I can disclose them all (how couldn't it be otherwise?), thus I can disclose my whole genome.
You can't apply that kind of reductio ad absurdum to confidentiality: it goes against common sense and the way the law works today. Telling someone in conversation that you are colourblind does reveal something about your genomic sequence, but it's very different from putting your entire genomic sequence online in a way that it can easily be discovered.
A primary school might put photos of the children with serious allergies on the wall in the cafeteria. They don't put that info on their web site. They certainly don't put it in a genealogical database so that anyone can ask whether X has any relatives with a nut allergy.
> A primary school might put photos of the children with serious allergies on the wall in the cafeteria. They don't put that info on their web site.
Alright. But a schoolteacher can take a photo of herlsef, alone at home, and publish it on her own personal website. This is basic freedom of expression.
Will this action create some problems? Probably yes. A stalker neighbor of the teacher may learn where she works due to this website and attack the school and take hostages, or whatever crazy thing. Does this mean that it is OK to forbid schoolteachers to publish their own photos on their own websites? No. That would be an unacceptable attack on freedom of expression.
I like your example with the photos because, in the end, a photo and your DNA are a similar kind of information. Whatever the consequences, you have the right to publish your own.
I don't think photos and DNA are particularly similar. There's the critical difference that DNA from a person provides a mass of easily applicable information about that person's close relatives, information that is not displayed in public like somebody's face is. If this discussion has a point, that's the whole point of it, but you've missed it or are choosing to deliberately ignore it.
Presumably the principle "I have the right to measure my bodily functions and publish the results" would also allow you to publish anything you see or hear, since sight and vision are bodily functions. I don't see why that principle (which I'd never heard of before today) should override all the sensible rules we have about publishing various kinds of things.