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Britain should soon have a centralised database containing samples of DNA
donated by its citizens. The database, being planned by the Medical Research
Council and the Wellcome Trust, will help researchers discover important
disease-causing genes. The scheme will be different from the one that has caused
controversy in Iceland. There, DNA and medical records of the entire population
have been included in a database held by a single company, DeCode Genetics of
Reykjavik. In Britain, samples will only be included if their donors consent,
and the database will be open to all researchers.