Remember the TV series Highlander and that cheesy Queen song that went with it? “Who wants to live forever?” Well, with SwissDNABank.com, it might be possible. Sort of.
For a one-time fee, the bank will store your digital files and an optional sample of your DNA in a secure vault underneath a mountain in the Swiss Alps. If you choose to only store digital data, you will be able to do that online through their Life Browser web app. This stores digital data (documents, photos, etc.) in chronological sequence where you create a date (month/day/year or just month/year or even just a year) as a file folder and upload data to it.
Services at SwissDNABank are paid for with a one-time fee according to the package you prefer. DNA samples, if you wish this included with your service, are done by DNA “card.” These are mailed to you, you swab samples from inside your mouth, and send it back. They are tested for validity (to make sure they’re good samples) and then stored in the vault.
The data you send to the SwissDNABank is encrypted with only you having the key. This is also stored in the vault under one of the mountains of Switzerland, rather than on an SSD hard drive or similar on your own computer.
Prices start at $299, which gives you a gigabyte of storage and no DNA storage. They go up to $698 for 4GB of storage and DNA sample storage. These prices are one-time only with the SwissDNABank using the money in investment to pay for the upkeep perpetually.
For some, this might be just the ticket for saving themselves for posterity. I envision that the kind of thing usually stored there is probably mostly photos and scans of awards or trophies. The Hollywood side of me says that there’s probably some secret file with all of the secrets of the Priory of Scion and maybe the true JFK killers’ confessions or something. If only Dan Brown could gain access!
There is definitely a market for this and SwissDNABank, which launched officially in August, is definitely poised to take it by storm.
