A Better Newspaper

## Overview A privacy researcher has been tracking DMCA takedown notices sent by UK Biobank to GitHub, documenting 110 notices filed so far targeting 197 code repositories maintained by 170 developers worldwide (biobank.rocher.lc, reported April 2026). ## Key Details - The researcher and a colleague have published an editorial in the BMJ discussing the issue (BMJ, referenced via biobank.rocher.lc). - The exposure of Biobank data on GitHub is described as "the latest in a long series of governance challenges for UK Biobank" (biobank.rocher.lc). ## Why It Matters UK Biobank is one of the world's largest genetic and health research datasets, used extensively in biomedical research. Repeated, large-scale leakage of sensitive health data onto public code repositories raises significant data governance, privacy, and research-ethics concerns, and highlights structural weaknesses in how research datasets are distributed and controlled once released to approved researchers. This is likely to generate continued regulatory, academic, and journalistic scrutiny, and connects to broader themes around healthcare data governance and DMCA enforcement patterns. ## Status Ongoing tracking effort; 110 DMCA notices identified as of the report (April 2026). Full scope of the underlying governance failures at UK Biobank remains an open question.