The book of life, spelt out in our DNA, is becoming a modern Book of Revelations. Craig Venter, the entrepreneur who helped to sequence the human genome, published a paper recently claiming that his company could work out what someone looked like simply by analysing their genetic data.
Using a database of around a thousand people of different ages, ethnicity and gender, scientists at Human Longevity Inc, where Mr Venter is head of scientific strategy, searched for associations between small DNA sequences and facial characteristics. They found that the sequences could be used, supposedly, to pick out their owner with an accuracy of 74 per cent.
The research raised obvious questions of genetic privacy: imagine the ethical and legal implications if a drop of blood, left at a crime scene or a street protest, could be used to print a face.