The genomes of 10 people, volunteers in the Harvard Medical School’s Personal Genome Project, will be available on the website, www.personalgenomes.org. The project is a great first step to speed medical research progress. Among those 10 participants are the genetic professor George Church, Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker, and technology investor Esther Dyson.

The project hopes to expand to 100,000 participants and its goal is to boost medical research by eliminating the bureaucratic procedures normally required to protect the privacy of human subjects. The more genetic information will be publicly available, the faster research will progress.

The genetic and medical information include photographs, personal disease histories, allergies, medications, as well as phenotypes, such as their food preferences or television viewing habits.

The goal of the experiment is to discover how genes and personal traits are related. The Harvard team will decode the DNA of those who decide to participate in this experiment for free as long as they agree to make their genetic data and phenotypes available to the general public.

Those who oppose the Personal Genome Project argue that making one’s genome available online may have some risks; as an example, anyone could take a participant’s genome and his personal information and use them to infer paternity, or claim relatedness to criminals or incriminate relatives.

Those who are interested in volunteering to become a participant should not be hesitant about publicly sharing any part of their genome data, including medical history and physical traits, according to Personal Genome Project Web site. To prevent any negative outcomes, organizers are committed to providing volunteers with the best information available so that they can make informed decisions about sharing their DNA sequence and personal information with the research community and the general public.