Harvard University’s Medical School is in preparations to begin a research called the Personal Genome Project which aims at speeding the medical progress by providing genetic information from about 100,000 participants.

The volunteers involved will agree to make all their information public once their DNA will be decoded. This includes disease history, medications, allergies, ethnic backgrounds and also photographs and data on other aspects from food preferences to television viewing habits. Because the research will include all these aspects, it doesn’t strictly fall into the scientific experiment category, being also considered a social study.

“We don’t yet know the consequences of having one’s genome out in the open,” said George M. Church, a human geneticist at Harvard who is the project’s leader and one of its subjects. “But it’s worth exploring.”

Aside from the people excited about the upcoming events, there are also some who criticize the project, saying that the people involved don’t really understand what they are getting themselves into, because by disclosing all this information, which is generally regarded as private, they are exposed to certain risks that cannot be fully understood at this point.

“I’m concerned that this could make it seem easy and cool to put your information out there when there is still a lot of stigma associated with certain genetic traits,” said Kathy Hudson, director of the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University. “There will be new uses of this data that people can’t anticipate — and they can’t do anything to get it back.”

Even after listening to these warnings, people tend to think of the good that such a project could do, as the scientific advancement would assist many people with their medical issues.