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Newborns' Blood Used To Build Secret DNA Database
Kanel notes a summary up at New Scientist of an investigation by a Texas newspaper revealing that Texas health officials had secretly transferred hundreds of newborn babies' blood samples to the federal government to build a DNA database. Here's the (long and detailed) article in the Texas Tribune. From New Scientist: "The Texas Department of State Health Services routinely collected blood samples from newborns to screen for a variety of health conditions, before throwing the samples out. But beginning in 2002, the DSHS contracted Texas A&M University to store blood samples for potential use in medical research. These accumulated at rate of 800,000 per year. The DSHS did not obtain permission from parents, who sued the DSHS, which settled in November 2009. Now the Tribune reveals that wasn't the end of the matter. As it turns out, between 2003 and 2007, the DSHS also gave 800 anonymized blood samples to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory to help create a national mitochondrial DNA database. This came to light after repeated open records requests filed by the Tribune turned up documents detailing the mtDNA program. Apparently, these samples were part of a larger program to build a national, perhaps international, DNA database that could be used to track down missing persons and solve cold cases."
But, how is a blood sample from somebody born in 2003 going to solve a cold case? I guess a seven year old is prone to murder.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
This is actually not that unusual. Typically if they take a tissue sample from you at the hospital, it belongs to them, and you have no property rights over it. For an extreme case, check out the story of Henrietta Lacks, who died of cancer in 1951. They took cells from her tumor, kept them alive indefinitely, and commercialized them. Her relatives didn't know about any of this until decades later.
As TFA notes, these blood samples were anonymized, and mitochondrial DNA cannot be traced back to individuals.
So there was no privacy issue, and no issue of property rights. And therefore the issue was...?
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Because the TFA certainly doesn't.
How, exactly, are anonymized blood samples going to used to track down missing persons or solve cold cases, or do anything else that hinges on tying a person to that blood sample? That is assuming you believe the samples were actually anonymized, which there's no way to know for sure.
I'm not defending what was done, but the only real use I can see would be statistical evaluation. Possibly a good idea, but the implementation (doing it without consent) is clearly wrong.
Merde, il pleut encore!
They don't believe in DNA in Texas. Shouldn't they have a database of commandments and plagues or something?
The database is useless until these children reach an age where they are actually capable of committing crimes (we'll say 15 or so). Are the taxpayers funding this?
If you can read this, it means that I bothered to log in.
This is all part of a plot from the illuminati! The fact that Bush is from Texas proves it!! I am so vindicated.
Actually it's more like the give-and-take between law enforcement, who mainly thinks about how to do their job more easily, and privacy activists, who mainly think of things in terms of how they could be used to take away privacy. A fairly natural process.
Qxe4
So there was no legal privacy issue, and no issue of legal property rights. And therefore the issue was moral or ethical, or that the legal system should be changed?
Good thing that Slashdot made sure this made the front page 5 days after the article was first posted.
whosyourdaddy
Have gnu, will travel.
I recall back in the mid 90's reading all the hype surrounding genetics, and how the U.S. government were putting panels together to discuss the ethical implications of genetics in the on-coming years, as technology improved, and as advances in medicine booned.
Now fast forward 15 years. Where are the standards, and implemented foresight at the Federal level from said 'important panels', such that this scenario, and the absence of public awareness around it, come to fruition?
Is this just another example of the failure of Government and the indecision by elected officials to do what is required in the face of technological advances, versus waiting for capitalism to 'sort itself out'?
Anyone else agree or disagree?
Discuss... what kind of punishment should this yield?
The article brings up the specter of privacy violations without really explanation that the combination of the anonymized and mitochondrial DNA makes identification difficult. In fact, the article makes it appear that mtDNA is somehow more definitive than nuclear DNA. Yes, it was a violation of rights to collect and store the samples.
I'm wondering how 800 "anonymized" samples of mitochondrial DNA going to help solve any cold cases. First it's mitochondrial DNA which is not as distinctive as nuclear DNA. For humans, it links maternal parentage not individual characteristics. Second, it's "anonymized" meaning that using them in identification later is unlikely.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
used for day 1 pre existing conditions.
* To identify races?
* To profile racial difference?
* To track individuals (and/or families), crime involvement, education level, whatnots?
* To look for certain special DNA strains?
BIG BROTHER knows no bound, does it?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
CNN reported last month that DNA samples from newborns are taken in several states without parent consent or notification. In Florida, they are stored indefinitely. Many states give the samples to researchers.
I'm pretty sure Agent Mulder found these in an underground vault about ten years ago...
Figures it would take the liberal media this long to cover it
Her family should get a royalty every time a cancer cell makes another unauthorized copy of her DNA.
you dont always need the DNA of the subject your trying to find. If you find someone who has similar DNA (ie a blood relative) then you have reduced your search down to a handful of people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_profiling#Familial_searching
...where aliens cross-bred with humans, and they had green acid blood, and there were bees, and Indians, and snow, and...well, whatever, but I bet all the X-Files movies pop up on cable in the next few weeks.
My, Texas is getting a bit crowded.
Beside the obvious total control aspects, the elite needs to know who is a good fit for organ transplant. Nah, I'm just too paranoid today.
I don't care what they did with her blood.
Not. One. Bit.
My son was born in Houston in late 2001. I don't get warm fuzzy feelings from this article. *
So is Icke right, are there lizards or not?
This story smells like lizards all over it.
I haven't killed anybody, I don't care. Isn't it better that the government knows who you are anyway?
Okay, let's split up the two issues, which are different.
Privacy:
IMO the absence of a privacy violation here is not just a legality. There was no violation of privacy at all in this case. Not violation in any legal sense, and no violation in any ethical sense. The mitochondrial DNA cannot be traced to individuals, so the individuals' privacy has been maintained. It's no more a violation of privacy than if someone had gone to the doctor with a case of syphilis, and the doctor duly reported it as a statistic to some government agency, with no personally identifiable information.
Property:
Re the property side of things, sure, please go ahead and make a case for this. What is the ethical problem with the current legal setup?
It seems to me that the current legal setup is the best one in terms of ethics. It allows medical research to be carried out, without making it necessary for doctors or hospitals to beg and plead and negotiate for the rights to study someone's cancer cells or whatever. Ethically, I don't believe that these people have any property claim. I expel my body wastes into the sewers without any expectation that the city will negotiate with me individually for the possible economic value of those wastes. When I cut my hair and nails, the cuttings go in the trash, and I don't expect the city to enter into a bargaining process with me about what they're worth. IMO we have a situation where there's no ethical expectation that parents will retain any property rights to blood samples taken in the hospital, and where there may be benefits to society in using those samples in various ways. Therefore I don't think it's ethical to allow individuals to veto the use of the samples from their kids. Should they be able to opt out? I don't see why. It would have a negative effect on society by biasing the sample.
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so we can have them cut off at birth and not have to hear shit about how they have "rights" as they fuck everyone over with their shit eating ways.
this is such a non-issue. Just living in this world you leave DNA behind you willy-nilly doing whatever you do just to survive. Why does it matter at all if anonymous samples of blood from medical waste is saved or has data recorded from it? How is is OK to destroy the samples, but not OK to use them for research?
Let me explain to you why this is not as scary and outrageous as it would first seem. The summary and article are very good ones, but don't provide enough context for a non-expert to understand how serious/non-serious it is:
As the summary indicates and RTFA seems to confirm, DSHS collected the samples for use in anonymous human medical research. This is done all of the time, as another poster commented (and gave the great example of HeLa cells). Typically, an oversight committee reviews a great many details about your research plan and ensures your collection methods are sufficiently anonymous, and your research is done in such a way as to avoid revealing the identity of the sample if at all possible. (Usually, users are separated from the database maintainers, and the users never even know the identities of the samples).
As one example, co-worker of mine receives nasal swabs of infected children in Nicaragua, under the auspices of WHO and CDC. He screens them using very expensive diagnostic assays that aren't viable in the clinic but are useful for basic research. His lab has discovered several new viruses in these samples that weren't previously discovered due to geographic bias in clinical cohorts (you sample the people most likely to be able to pay for the cure). He never knows the names of the children, just age, symptoms, and previous infections. He has to renew his certification to work with human samples once a year to ensure he knows all relevant legal and ethical regulations, and must update his research plan regularly, and receive annual approval from the oversight committee, even if he doesn't change anything. (And must stop all research if he procrastinates and certification lapses) However, without being able to use these samples, both basic research and clinically relevant research would be hampered. DSHS probably operates in the same way.
The issue here is that these samples were passed to the federal government and they used them to build a DNA database. People sued primarily because DNA is considered very personal information in this country and having the government track you using it is a current moral panic/boogeyman. (Partially warranted, partially not). In this case, however, they were using mitochondrial DNA, which is separate from your normal chromosomal DNA. Because sperm have no mitochrondia, all of your mitochondrial DNA is passed matrilineally (i.e. from mother to child-- sons cannot pass it on at all). Because you only have one copy, it does not undergo recombination during sperm/egg generation, and thus changes very very slowly. As a result, people like the National Geographic Society are using the information to trace human migration patterns throughout history using mitochondrial sequence information (google it). However, because it's so similar from person to person ---it is unlikely to be able to be traced directly back to you or identify you the way your chromosomal DNA is--- instead, it can tell where your mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother came from, i.e. your ethnicity. With enough samples it may even be able to tell whether you are a recent immigrant, a long term american, etc. This means that, using this database as a source, police may one day collect mtDNA from a crime scene and know they are looking for a person from Eastern Europe that is 1st-3rd generation american. That is, it can be used to narrow suspects, but can't be used to identify you directly.
So, in the end, the information (at least to me, as a molecular biologist) is relatively harmless and perhaps even good, in balance. However, given the serious objections people would likely have if they had known their information would be used in this way, the oversight committee should have required additional consent to use and collect this information for each person's sample they collected (and insured the people who gave consent gave informed consent). That would have avoided the mess entirely, and been more ethical.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
tl;dr.
and you lose.
that's what HE said.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
Maybe TPTB are trying to screen for those with special abilities (we know who we are) and try to weed them out or mark them for future use when they are adults to be recruited.
Praise YHWH, we know how wins in the end and it's not evil.
If your DNA has nothing to hide, you should have nothing to fear. [/sarcasm]
From the Texas Tribune:
They never said they were turning over hundreds of dried blood samples to the federal government to help build a vast DNA database — a forensics tool designed to identify missing persons and crack cold cases.
The implication here is that the database is for tracking down these 800 babies if they ever go missing or become criminals. There is no indication that the missing persons and cold-case suspects would necessarily need to be involved with these people at all. Were they just taking scattershot samples from the general population in order to determine general haplotype types and frequencies? They only had 800 anonymous samples in this vast secret DNA database.
From newscientist.com:
The fear of a negative reaction is understandandable. Concerns over genetic privacy are growing - for example a recent study found that even anonymous collections of DNA can potentially be traced back to individuals. However, the DSHS appears only to have handed over mitochondrial DNA, which is next to impossible to trace to individuals.
Handling public fears about genetic privacy is certainly tricky, but concealing such an affair is not the answer - and only increases public mistrust.
The issue here is really the fact that they didn't say shit to the parents as this was all going on, because they feared the sort of bad publicity they're getting now.
You are wrong. When a person discards human waste, hair, nail, urine, feces, saliva, blood, cancer cells or whatever there is no legal expectation of privacy or property as you say. However when a tissue sample is given there is an expectation that it will be used ONLY for the purpose for which it was given. Any other use without the explicit permission of the owner is wrong and should be prohibited.
If a person drinks from a soda can and then discards that can then any DNA on the can, assuming traceability, can be used in a criminal case but if the person keeps the can then discards it without traceability then it cannot.
In the case of whether a doctor would need permission for a tissue sample to be entered into a database or some other and especially commercial use would be clear. A person's tissue is his property and cannot be used for purposes other than what he has explicitly permitted. In the case of the cancer patient you mentioned her body would become property of her estate and any use commercial or otherwise would need to be approved by the patient's heirs. If profits are made from a tissue sample then the heirs are entitled to royalties.
The idea of negative effects upon society by enforcing privacy and property rights are simply well, socialistic.
Edwin
It's totally obvious. It's Texas, from where the GOP will launch their army of clones from. They already have insurgents working in Oklahoma...I've met them in battle.
Hopefully we still have at least 10-15 years at the current level the Texas Legislature is funding the project on. My insiders tell me Haliburton is using off-shore stem cell research facilities to close the time gap, however.
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
If the baby had been born with a gun, this wouldn't have happened. Those permissive parents were asking for it by giving birth in an elitist hospital.
Well DNA is now obviously too much of a threat to personal security to be allowed to continue on in this way. As all forensic ID is made from Junk DNA, and it has already been demonstrated that Junk DNA can be edited, I forsee that people will be popping pills soon to re-write themselves. Then some government will try and lean on that and the human rights issues will float to the fore and it will be on for young and old. I can see parents changing their child's DNA when they pass puberty, as a service to them.
The post you're responding to was specifically about the ethical issues involved, not the legal ones. However, your post seems to be entirely a description of what you think the law says. You're incorrect about the law. (I assume we're talking about U.S. law here, since TFA was about something that happened in Texas.) Common law has said since Haynes' Case, in 1613, that bodies and parts of bodies are not legal property. This principle was upheld in the U.S. in 1990, in Moore v. Regents of the University of California, which ruled that a cancer patient had no property right relating to the commercial use of his cancer cells. The most recent case to uphold the same principle was Washington University v. Catalona (2006), in which patients sued to get back their samples of prostate tissue, blood, and DNA, and the court ruled that the samples were not their property.
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The forward march of progress!
I decide who researches with my DNA
I think it's time that we as a society faced the fact that there is no such thing as an anonymous DNA sample. Your DNA sequence is a unique identifier; period. There is no way to guarantee that your DNA can never be traced back to you; in fact, if anything, the guarantee should be that, given enough time, it can be traced back to you.
There is also no way to prevent someone from surreptitiously getting access to your DNA. You are constantly shedding skin and hair. You're not going to be able to stop leaving a trail of DNA behind you any more than you could keep from leaving footprints in the mud.
The cost of sequencing DNA has been decreasing 9-fold every 18 months. Currently, you can sequence an entire human genome for less than $10,000. Within the next year, it will be possible to sequence a human genome for $1000. 5 years after that, it will cost $1. At that point, anyone who wants to will be able to amass an enormous database of sequences.
We should take it as a given that in a reasonably short period of time, our DNA sequence will never be private or anonymous.
Seriously, didn't anyone in the entire state of Texas watch the Fox Network between 1992 and 2001? Don't they realize people think DNA databasing represents a a conspiracy at work, or at best a gross invasion of privacy?
Benign or not, such actions require some notice and some collaboration. I'm sure many, many parents would gladly help the program if were they asked openly and satisfied of the limitations on using their child's sample.
OK, not *really* HIPAA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Insurance_Portability_and_Accountability_Act, just the clauses your health insurance and the doctors/hospitals added once HIPAA gave them a vehicle to require you to explicitly sign away your rights to your medical information.
I have one question here.
1) Do you believe that it is inappropriate for a democratically elected government to build, maintain, and use a DNA Database? (If so, why?)
2) Do you think this was intentionally covered up, or that no one thought it was important enough to warrant mentioning.
Outside of military projects, governments do not generally go out of thier way to keep secrets. The vast majority of what any given government does is mundane and not especially important, surprising, or noteworthy. So in all fairness, I do not think this database was made secret intentionally by some moustache twirling villain type hoping to oppress the citizens of Texas.
As for the first point, I am a bit torn on it. If your willing to assume that the governments intentions for such a database are not inherently evil (ie: lets identify all them jews and forieners so we can purge them later), I am not so sure I see a problem with it. However, that only would apply as long as the government in question is using the database in a responsible fashion. That means not selling the data, taking adequate measures to keep that data safe, and requiring a warrant before running a suspects DNA against the database. If a criminal leaves DNA evidence at a crime scene, then I see no problem of having the means to run a check against it.
END COMMUNICATION
I am not going to get into the ethical part of whether or not the government has a right to my DNA (I hear a women screaming in the back of my mind something about "my body, my choice!" but that is part of the ethical part of the argument) MY problem is if we give the gov our dna and they find a gene that say makes you more likely to get cancer, are you going to be denied coverage. OK OK I KNOW I have heard our politicians telling us that we will never be not covered because of preexisting conditions BUT Social Security started out OPTIONAL and we have all seen how our "Progressive tax" has grown to more than just the ORIGINAL 1% it started as and there are PLENTY of other examples of the growth of government away from our founding principles.....
I also question "Of the 17 enumerated powers given to Congress in the US Constitution (that they all SWORE to uphold and DEFEND) which one gives them the Right to manage my PERSONAL health care?"
NOTE: When I say "our" "the Government" etc. I am referring to the USA where TFA is referring and this is taking place. I am also referring to the CURRENT debate (or lack of debate) on health care (the House and Senate bills that are VERY different and cost far more than we can afford... see http://www.usdebtclock.org/ )
We ran into this same survey in 2005, we read the form and it was an immediate NO WAY. The nurse said it was a "legal requirement." My wife's BS detector hit 10 at that point and told them it wasn't happening in this lifetime.
Needless to say, we got a birth certificate despite the refusal.
Seriously. I thought this was news for nerds.
Are you kidding?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Constitution
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
Insane. The Federal government has almost not jurisdiction within a state and over the people. The 4th amendment saw to that. How can I feel safe in my person when someone is violating the rights of newborn babies? I voted for Obama, and I Hoped to see Change. Haven't see fuck all. I gave him a break, but the idea of wanting to take over the Internet based on the most obvious lies is amazing. And Rahm wants to send all 18 year olds into the army. Read his book. It's scary. I loved him during the campaign and I love that he was not McCain. However after all that I've seen he has done nothing useful. Bailouts, GM, Stimulus, Wars, Wiretapping, internet take over, the Morthers act, Patriot act renewal, and taking DNA from children to store so that Insurance companies can deny our kids benefits or something? Insane. It's not just impolite it's without any dignity or respect for the people. Some poor dump idiot asked what the problem was. Idiot. They took something from people's kids and didn't ask. New born babies. Few things are as helpless and innocent. Welcome to the world the greatest nation on the planet where you will have your right's molested withing minutes. Such respect for the individual. Such respect for the constitution. The paragon of virtue. The President and Congress ONLY have ONE job, uphold the Constitution. How can they do that while spiting on it with crap like this. Amazing.
If you are not burning mad with white hot hate at the moment, you don't have kids, or you are the kind of person who likes or puts up with abuse. In any case if you are not pissed I feel deeply sorry for you. You really don't know what's going on it you are not mad about this. Really.
Both parties are losers.
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
This is YOUR genetic information. It is you soul possession upon entering this world. Then they take it from you. If they had asked it would not have seemed just the theft ... theft from a new born baby. How morally bankrupt is that? Had they just had the common sense to ask, most people would have said yes. Most people will help a homeless person and curse a thief. Learn the difference or expect people to laugh when your possessions are stolen, even though you might have been willing to give them away. Removal of choice or forcing someone on a person is unAmerican. It goes against most of what the country was founded yo uphold. Try to remember, there is no legal document that gives your fundamental rights in this country. You're thinking the Constitution does right? Nope. Not a chance. The Constitution expressly does not give you any of the right in it, or any others. I helps to explain that you were born or created with those right and the Constitution can only reaffirm those rights. Your right explained by the Constitution, but those are not the limits. It clearly violates the spirit, if not the law, of the Constitution while showing amazing disrespect for children and parents alike. I can't this of this as somehow a friendly thing. Since they did not crow on the news about it and clearly went to zero effort to make it known. This shows the height of their shame in what looks like the worst unimaginable theft of something so personal. How much that most dampen the mood of what would have been the happiest moment for so many, when they discover their child's very identity was taken without being told. We are not property. They don't own us. Our children are not their play things. Our children are not their property. I resent being treated that way. I resent children being treated that way.
Obama is fired.
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
I have not read the cases but in the cited cases had the patient from whom the samples were taken signed some type of agreement with the surgeon/hospital that all samples would become property of the doctor/hospital?
now I understand the shadowy look in the faces of all that people around the day my kid was born, why they left my wife bleed a few more minutes while collecting those samples, fortunately she is OK, I'm not sure but I felt I was being stolen something without knowing what it was, and the relief for having my kid delivered healthy and ok just made this suspicion just fade away in the prospect of the current happiness. but now I know what happened.
When we cut our hair and nails we toss them into the garbage along with our feces because they're basically worthless. What little value they may have is not worth the time or effort to seek out. Let's say hair or nail clippings suddenly became more valuable than gold, would you discard them then?
If there's a need for a patient's biological material for research purposes, patients should have the option of selling or donating it. There's no need to beg or plead; if the material is precious enough, then there should be a willing price for exchange, while the benevolent among us still have the option to donate.
Something else to consider is that the ability to sell biological material helps to satisfy the demand for organ transplants. Instead of immediately burying or cremating the body, people would have an incentive to sell their organs upon their death for the financial benefit of any family they left behind. Being paid is greater incentive than the good feelings you get when you donate. Though I suppose you can just legislate all organs to be donated upon death, that is the greatest benefit to society after all.
SCULLY: So much of the work that we do cannot be measured in standard terms.
SPECIAL AGENT CHESTY SHORT: How would you measure it?
SCULLY: We open doors with the X-Files, which lead to other doors.
- From "Requiem" ("X-Files", S.7 Ep. 22)
DarkStarZumaBeachSurfinApocalypseWow
Which begs the question...
<b>How is babby formed?</b>
Nope. From what I remember hearing about one of those cases, the tissue was removed in a surgical operation to remove a cancerous growth. The cells were therefore "medical waste". Think of it as a variation on salvage laws.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
At least they haven't been keeping blood on every newborn since 1984 like Temple Street childerns hospital in Dublin....
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article6968561.ece
We have had this for almost 30+ years in Sweden, called the PKU Registry. They take samples from every newborn to look for deceases, etc. After the initial test the databases is only allowed for scientific research and in case of disasters to identify victims.
You can however at any time ask for your sample to be destroyed if you have any privacy concerns.
US courts may have found no property rights, but international law, meaning the Declaration of Helsinki, and accepted policy, meaning the CIOMS International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research, require that participants in research projects, like collection of a mitochondrial DNA database, give their informed consent. If these people are surprised to find that their DNA or mitochondrial DNA is stacked away in a database, this would seem to be in violation of the Declaration of Helsinki. (It's not clear whether the larger law enforcement database of genomic DNA is subject to those treaties and guidelines, but one would hope law enforcement recognizes a similar set of human rights.) Any study I've been involved with, that used residual tissue from a biopsy or other clinical procedure still had to get IRB approval and still had to get consent from the patient.
The ethical guidelines for participating in medical research is for research done on, for, or to the patient in question. They can't GIVE you something, or TREAT you without informed consent, but they CAN use data about you, and cells from you, with or without your permission. It's done every day in medical facilities around the world.
The basic premises of the Declaration of Helsinki is that patients make informed decisions about medical procedures that effect their welfare, and refers to research PARTICIPANTS.
If they want to take your blood for research, they need to ask your permission to take it. However, if they're taking your blood for other purposes, and you're informed and consent to the removal of the blood (the risk factor top the patient), whats done with that blood above and beyond the initial medical need you consented to is irrelevant, unless it were to be re-introduced somehow to your system.
Don;t quote things that do not apply just because you'd LIKE them to apply. If you don't like the practice, just say "i think this law needs to be changed and here's why" but don't go around spreading FUD, only assholes do that.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Until 2002, the cards were thrown out after a short storage period. But starting that year, the state health department began storing blood spots indefinitely, for “research into causes of selected diseases.”
The disconcerting part that you mention is last years news. They are now destroying the blood spots. Nowhere in the article, and I scoured it, does it say that all the samples were entered into a database. It does, however, say that the samples are being destroyed:
While the agency is destroying more than 5 million baby blood spots collected before the new legislation took effect, she says, officials are not asking outside researchers — including those at the Armed Forces lab — to return the samples they were given. But they must destroy them when they are done with them.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
Does anyone know the Rule Number for "For every powerful tech, there exists a wrongful implementation in the wild"?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Odd looking back I wonder if there is causation as a sudden surge of gene sequencing and DNA patents coming out of that. Nothing like getting a hold of someone's DNA and patenting, copyrighting, shit lets even trademark the sequencing data.
"I'm sorry sir but we cannot do your lab work, your dna is currently patented and copyrighted by (INSERT TEXAS BASES PATENT TROLL COMPANY OF THE WEEK HERE) so we cannot run any actual tests."
or which is now apparently a real issue being discussed at the U0M:
"Well we'd like to use your DNA for research but if your DNA has already ben patented or the sequencing data copyrighted it could jepordize the research... We need to pay some lawyers to do the research to make sure your DNA sequence is not already in a private database..."
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Oh sure, if newborn blood were used to build anything else it wouldn't be an issue. But throw in a secret government database and suddenly the hippies are up in arms.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
I was going to write something about welcoming our new infantile overlords but then I remembered about the US Congress.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Wow. That's got to be one of the greatest super-villain headlines of all time. It has a secret conspiracy and borderline mad science, with just a hint of human sacrifice. If only it ended with "... Which I'll Use To Rule The World!" and it'd have everything.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
So there was no legal privacy issue, and no issue of legal property rights. And therefore the issue was moral or ethical, or that the legal system should be changed?
So you're implying that the law should encompass morality and ethics?
This is just another reason to have your baby at home with a midwife.
Ok, so I have no legal right to my body parts. What you're saying is, that the police can come into my house without a warrant and take hair out of my wife's hair jar (a gift from her grandmother, a device used by women long ago to collect hair to later weave hair into artforms). Because it is not property? Or in the alternative, they can take it, even if it's not something they are looking for, or that anyone who comes into my house legally can take it, because it's not property. I think, you're a little confused there. Also, Roe vs. Wade recognizes a person's right of control over their own body and "parts" (sorry if this term offends). I think you're overreaching there a bit in your argument.
I think what you meant is that discarded body parts aren't property in the sense that you can control it. In the cases cited here, they all concern discarded property. Once you give it away or throw it away, you've discarded it and no longer have any rights to it. It's no longer your property.
You're mixing you example to achieve your desired result.
"Can police come into my house without a warrant and take hair out of my wife's hair jar" is a flawed test.
"Can police come into my house without a warrant" - no.
"...take hair out of my wife's hair jar" - yes. Or from her hairbrush, or from her hairdresser's floor, etc.
I was speaking about right vs wrong and not strictly legal issues although why the two should be separate issues I cannot say.
Just because courts have decided that some practices are legal doesn't make them right morally or ethically.
In the past courts have decided that certain people had no legal right to their own bodies at all. This was called slavery.
Taking a body part without permission is wrong even if it is legal.
Edwin
Say you were tasked with creating the software and hardware for a DNA database... How are you supposed to develope it, test it, etc without some actual DNA? And let's be realistic, such a thing needs to be really properly tested, so you can't just say "use your own". You need lots of samples. My point here is that the summary was written by a paranoiac.
So you're implying that the law should encompass morality and ethics?
No, I don't know you got that. All I suggested was that the issues some people might have with this situation might lie outside of the legal system.
You've made some very well-structured legal arguments about the issue. Unfortunately all that does is show that you've completely missed the point I was trying to make. In some ethical systems, privacy includes protecting most "hidden" information - like what's in a person's DNA even if it is anonymous. And some people have a moral belief that the body is sacred and even "waste parts" deserve respect - so using them for scientific purposes or financial gain would be evil in the same way that hurting an innocent would be.
And that's the point - you aren't just claiming that you don't have a problem with this or that the legal system says it's OK, but that there are no privacy or property issues under any system at all, and then defending that idea using arguments that are only relevant in the one particular framework that you're used to. This is as myopic as a Christian believing in a single God, and being completely confounded as to how atheists and Hindus could possibly believe otherwise.
That wasn't decided by the courts. It was decided by informal custom, later backed up by the US constitution and various state and federal laws.
This is kind of a complicated issue, because the person involved (a newborn) can't be asked for permission. States generally require newborns to have blood tests, the reason being that there are certain metabolic abnormalities that can cause mental retardation if not recognized. If was retarded, and my retardation could have been avoided if my parents had allowed my blood to be tested...well, I'd be mad as hell at my parents.
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In some ethical systems, cows are sacred, so every McDonalds in the U.S. should be burned to the ground. In some ethical systems, slavery is considered a good thing for the slaves, because they're not capable of taking care of themselves. In some ethical systems, girls should have their clitorises removed when they reach adolescence.
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Yes, moral values and ethical systems exist that both of us find crazy and horrifying - what's your point?
You seem to be implying that every other type of morals/ethics is vastly inferior to yours, and even worse, that this inferiority is so vast and obvious that you have an excuse for acting as if they didn't even exist in previous posts.
In the case of taking samples from infants or others incapable of giving consent the rule should be that their property rights should be protected. One doesn't steal candy from babies. Although there may be a case of liability if parents fail to take care of their infants by getting blood tests that still doesn't invalidate the property rights of the child. There have been cases where a sibling was conceived for the express purpose of making that child a donor. this is wrong for the very same reason. A person's body is his/her property and just because a person can't legally consent to having part of his body taken doesn't make it ok for his guardian to do it.
My body is mine. The products of my body are mine. I can sell body parts or rent my body as I see fit.
Laws which violate this principle, even if it's for the person's own good are wrong. An exception of course is made for infants or incompetents to ensure their good health but then using them or their parts for other purposes is wrong.
It's really a simple principal of property rights.
When doctors report an STD, it is not done anonymously.
I'm Canadian and was traveling from Canada to Costa-Rica with a stop at a US airport without an international zone. I had to do the whole US customs thing and they took both my picture and fingerprints. Which means that now the US govt has my fingerprints while the Canadian govt does not. We were never warned that this would happen and most people won't cancel a vacation just to prevent the US from fingerprinting them.
we DO NOT know everything about what value our dna may/may not have, but if the govt wants to collect it and place it into a database, especially if it is done surreptitiously, you can bet it isn't a good thing for us. if it was, they'd be looking for all the attaboys available from the open forum. the bigger problem is this... what kind of a world are we living in when we feel we can't trust our 'elected' govt to do right by us? figger this out, then fix it, and all this OTHER crap will become a non-issue! thanks fer lis'nin' seekertom
I'm fairly certain that police can't come into my house and take my personal property even with a warrant unless it is something related to the search warrant. So, if they come into my house looking for stolen "statuary" they can't take my paintings or dvds or my Connect4, Five Little Monkeys, Candy Land or Scrabble games, because they in no way could be used to assist in solving a stolen statuary. why would they then be allowed to take my wife's hair from a jar? Now, for example in the above case, it might be possible to want to search the persons photos or computer for incriminating proof (ie surveillance photos of the crime scene, email communications, saved maps, etc.)
The reason for this is, say the police suspect you of a crime, so they get a warrant to search your property, if there were not limits that what they take is related to the crime, there would be nothing to stop them from taking EVERYTHING in the house, because it might lead to a clue. Now this would be a very powerful tool that the "justice" system could use to hammer people into submission. Why there might even be something hidden in the walls. they might just have to tear down the whole house to look for a clue.
I'm not mixing examples. I'm gave three examples.
1: Police without a warrant,
2: Police with a warrant, but unrelated to the object at hand,
3: Ordinary citizens, I've invited into the house.
I'm fairly certain, that inviting someone in your house doesn't give them the right to take your dvds or dvd player. That includes the police. The police can take things from a house they suspect are proof of or involved in a crime, once they have legal entry. That legal entry is by either warrant or by being invited in. If you let a cop into your house he is perfectly within his rights, and the law, to go to your PC and search for illicit child multimedia, provided it is powered on and a user already logged in. My point is hair or any body part IS and MUST be personal property, up to the point of that person discarding it.