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UC Berkeley Asking Incoming Students For DNA
peterofoz writes "The students will be asked to voluntarily submit a DNA sample. The cotton swabs will come with two bar code labels. One label will be put on the DNA sample and the other is kept for the students' own records. The confidential process is being overseen by Jasper Rine, a campus professor of Genetics and Development Biology, who says the test results will help students make decisions about their diet and lifestyle." No word in the story on just what "confidential" means — who will have access to the results, how long they'll be kept, or what else they might someday be used for. Will the notoriously liberal Berkeley campus see this as a service or an invasion of privacy?
Please leave your DNA with the school nurse...
Liberals tend to think for themselves, so I imagine we will see many different viewpoints emerge, rather than some lock-step, campus wide consensus.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
There's no gene for fate.
Living With a Nerd
What if a student REFUSES to make a voluntary donation?
Yours In Novosibirsk,
K. Trout
Nope, never!
It's voluntary, so there is no invasion of privacy going on, when you give up your DNA willingly you can't be expected it to be held very strongly in confidentiality. It's kind of like that whole unsecured Wifi debacle. If you don't know exactly what they want to do with your DNA, you'd be a fool to give it to them. That is their mistake to make though, I'm not going to deny them that by saying this kind of action should be illegal.
If kids want dietting tips, or help on decisions, there are plenty of resources out there. I'm a little more paranoid at the idea of this becoming Comfortable. First its "Let us take your DNA to help you diet". Even if only 10% of people sign up, if they enjoy their results they'll tell their friends to partake in it next year. It will grow, until more schools are doing it. Then the elementary schools will do it. Then that confidentiality agreement will phase away, and there goes the neighbourhood.
I guess the only course of action is to warn people of the dangers and hope they make the right choice.
What is this DNA going to be used for? How is it going to "help students make decisions about their diet and lifestyle." Will they use it for genetic screening? In my opinion, most DNA screening is useless. It's like a full body scan, I'm sure you're going to find something, but is it going to be anything you can change? Or anything you care about? Or will it just make you nervous about a 1% increase in the chance that you'll get some rare cancer? Most gene association studies are weak at best anyway. It's pretty rare that one gene, or even one QTL is responsible for most or all of a phenotype.
I'm sure they'll use this in other ways too. They say it's confidential, but it can probably get trotted out in the case of some sort of criminal proceedings. Which is probably a good thing, conceptually, but is still somewhat of an invasion. And it's voluntary now, but will it stay that way?
It would be curious to know what kind of agreement the student has to sign when voluntarily giving a DNA sample. My guess is that they would have to sign a legal waiver, absolving the UC Berkley of any responsibility should something untoward happen. I am curious to know what is being done to ensure that privacy and protection is being guarranteed. I hate to be a naysayer, but what if the unthinkable happens and law enforcement attempts to get DNA data from UC Berkley and a mistake happens which wrongfully convicts or potentially executes someone.
The data will be kept private to those who profit financially from it.
Maybe they just don't give a damn about potential research subjects' rights during recruitment, but permitting the solicitation to go out AS PART OF A FUCKING FRESHMAN ORIENTATION PACKET is beyond the pale. This research subject recruitment strategy is damnably coercive my view. Berkeley's IRB should be ashamed. Or better yet, replaced.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
> Will the notoriously liberal Berkeley campus see this as a service or an
> invasion of privacy?
It's only invasion of privacy if it's done by an evil "corporation" or other capitalist running dog. Everything a liberal organization does is for your own good and only a right-wing wacko would ever suspect one of failing to diligently and effectively safeguarding his privacy (especially when said organization is part of the state of California: you know they have only your best interests at heart and know better than you what you need).
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Wow, whatever happened to the last bastion of counter culture and hippies?
For a place that's considered one of the most liberal places in the US, you'd really expect some more backlash against this.
I mean, Harvard, sure, but Berkely??
Did you notice it was voluntary? It's not a requirement. If a freshman doesn't want to do it, it appears they can just not do it. Not sure if people should be fired for offering voluntary choices to new students. I guess, however, in our coddled child society, choices might confuse and damage the young minds. If we don't spoon feed them and water everything down to the bare minimum, they might not be able to cope!
The summary emphasized the word "confidential". Really, the important key word here should have been "voluntary". What are the consequences of not giving a sample? If they don't care if you give a sample or not, then why would this be an issue? If you're smart enough to go to Berkeley you should be smart enough to be aware of the current pros and cons of giving a DNA sample.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I just thought I'd point out that the whole barcode thing is irrelevant. They may as well put your name on the sample, because as soon as you seek to turn in your code and discover the result, you're mapped back to the sample.
Unless you can look at all the samples, and you're bright enough to examine several hundred mixing your own in somewhere at random. You'd need a printer of some sort, a free barcode font, and a $70 reader to reverse-engineer the code. It wouldn't hurt to have a handful of friends' codes to make sure you've got the sequence right.
But let's face it, almost zero will notice that link.
Personally, I'd suspect that the entire barcode thing is a lie of sorts. The researchers would have to know the flaws, but they're not disclosing it to the students up front, rather disguising it.
Unfortunately with most bureaucracies (especially universities), voluntary things have a bad habit of being "required". For example, a student goes in, University bureaucrat just says "and give me your DNA sample." Most students having to go through all the horseshit, including having to give Social Security numbers, probably won't even think to ask if it is in fact voluntary.
Speaking of SSNs, those used to be voluntary and now they're required. And when that happens, school admin folks become very careless with personal data - universities are just horribly incompetent with student's personal information.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
I don't quite understand what the big deal is. You're acting as though the incoming class is being asked to sign its soul away.
I think universities should do this sort of thing much more often. If universities turned around and made the results of their research available to students on an accelerated schedule, it would be exciting, inspirational, and motivate learning a lot better than, "Well, read this textbook about stuff that happened 20 years ago while we do a lot of exciting new things that we won't tell you about and are licensing to for-profit companies who might sell it to you after you graduate."
Of course there are privacy issues, but universities have access to a fair bit of private information (e.g. financial, if the student has applied for aid; academic transcripts; possibly personal essays, and so on). As long as they're not completely careless with genetic information, it's hardly different from anything else (especially since they're doing a limited analysis).
It's voluntary from the college's point of view. The problem is that things that are voluntary from the school's point of view are things that students who are applying are strongly compelled to do. It's absurd, but higher education admissions are a game of signals, and high school students (And their parents) don't want to risk giving the wrong signals when there are thousands of people competing with them. This means that there's a strong incentive do anything "voluntary" on the application.
The school may not even be thinking this, because schools often think students' calculations about how to get in are just over-the-top and absurd. But the schools should be thinking this, because applicants at competitive schools will almost always make those calculations, no matter that the school says "Don't worry about it so much" in the left hand while saying "We only admit the very best!" in the right hand.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
There is zero reason why it couldn't be voluntary AFTER the students are settled on campus. Putting it in the orientation packet makes the incoming student vulnerable to parental pressure to "volunteer," and sends a message (regardless of the word "voluntary") that this is something expected of incoming freshmen by the University, not something one clueless researcher somehow conned the IRB into approving. It's an outrageous recruiting tactic that should never have been approved, ESPECIALLY for subjects who may be minors at the point of recruitment.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
From the 1940s to the 1970s, Ivy League colleges took naked pictures of every incoming freshman, supposedly for use in scientific studies of the students' posture.
I am not making this up. See, e.g., this Times coverage from 1995.
I'm not going to make any kind of normative statement about whether people should say Yes to Cal's offer, here, but just wanted to point out that weird-ass instrusions into student privacy are nothing new.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
OTOH, Conservatives/Libertarians would most likely pass on giving up their DNA, in lock step. I know, I know, the very idea of them being at Berkeley is laughable, but still.
It's hardly a big deal if it's voluntary. If you don't like it say no...
The first one is free. At what point is it no longer "free," monetarily or otherwise?
Privacy used to be expected. Now I no longer expect it. I expect that everything that is done on the internet is viewed by someone, somewhere. In a discussion yesterday about Microsoft's NSAKEY, it was discovered that there was yet another hidden key embedded in Microsoft apps to allow the government access to your data. Brave new world.
Coming soon to your community; risk assessment of every individual, eugenics, fascism.
Best regards.
the Ivy League nude posture photos were taken in the 1940s through the 1970s of all incoming freshmen at certain Ivy League and Seven Sisters colleges, ostensibly to gauge the rate and severity of rickets, scoliosis, and lordosis in the population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League_nude_posture_photos
Once it's recorded, it is recorded for life.
Be ready to pulled in for questioning with a presumption of guilt when the police get a 90% dna match on the 13 markers sometime in the next decade when the police are using records from that "temporary" database.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I'm sorry, but your two points against this seem to be:
1) Students could be pressured to volunteer by their parents.
2) Students might infer that this is "required".
Both are simple ways to say students can't think for themselves and we shouldn't subject them to simple decisions. When you enter college you're usually 18. You're an adult. Part of being an adult is understanding what a voluntary program is and understanding that you do _not_ have to volunteer.
If you can't read a piece of paper that says to do follow along, I'm not sure what you're going to learn in college.
Kids, DO NOT DO THIS!!! Ever! For any reason! Holy shit, do you have any idea how crazy this is? There are sooooo many ways this information could be used against you, both now and in the future that I could type for hours without even scratching the surface.
Once you give this data away, you can't take it back. You can't control it. You will have no way to know where it goes or who has access to it.
Berkeley students, you should be out marching and protesting right now. Your protests should make national headlines by Friday. Get to it!
I don't know if I would trust Jasper Rine. He was a part of the committee reviewing Ignacio Chapella's tenure case and made a forceful (but empty) threat during a class, implying one of his students stole it. (In reality, it was probably some shmuck off the street who nabbed it.)
Don't you love it when your palm taps the touchpad and you overwrite your own sentence?
"If you can't read a piece of paper that says this program is voluntary and realize you don't have to follow along, I'm not sure what you're going to learn in college."
Honestly... What is the difference between giving away your photo and a sample of yout DNA?
Don't answer shalow crap, as both:
- can be used to identify you
- can be used for evil purposes, racism, crime etc.!
Is it really dangerous in practice?
The ultimate narcissism: posting your genome in a social network.
Dont laugh. Blood types, a very simple version of one's gentic idnetity, is a major pseudo-science in Japan. You cant date someone of the "wrong type".
Sounds like marketing talk. The correlation between the data you can get from a DNA sample and the effects of your diet and lifestyle on your health is weak. Except for a very few cases of mutations in certain genes, genetic markers won't tell you more than you get from knowing your and parent's health history. As a special bonus, I'm offering free diet and lifestyle advice for UC Berkley students: eat moderately, don't drink to excess, don't smoke, wear your seatbelt. If they actually plan to use this data for anything, I hope the UC Berkley IRB expects more disclosure to the participants than that it will be used "to help students make decisions about their diet and lifestyle."
BITE ME!
That is the only way they would get a DNA sample from me. And they better hold me down, or, I will use that technique to get a sample of their DNA.
Damn, how stupid have people become?
"Hey! Gimmie your DNA, I'll help you diet!"
"Wellll..."
"No really, I'll just use it to help you diet. No one else will have access to the information. Ever."
"Ok, cool!"
One year later...
"Hey kid, um, bad news. The Bursar's office called and said they wanted your DNA since they're funding your financial aid to the tune of $100,000 (much more than that after years and years of interest of course...). I fought them, but the Regents stepped in, kicked me out, and gave the Bursar's office all my data. Sorry. You should totally sue. Anyway, I'm off to St. Thomas to be a scuba instructor. Good luck with that!"
"Shit."
Why would a DNA profile be needed for the dieting tips an average college-aged person would find useful or informative? Is there some sub-set of the population for whom broccoli is a deadly poison and deep-fried cheese is the key to eternal youth?
And yes, they might be able to tell you that you have a genetic predisposition to certain kinds of cancers or heart disease. But the risk these factors actually pose often pale in comparison to good advice about food and exercise that apply to everyone.
This was modded -1 Stanford Grad?
[UID-HeinzIntel]
I disagree strongly. I think we need a more open approach to genetic data-mining. People should be cautious with their private information, but we have a ridiculous amount of progress to be had in the world of understanding our genetics. Giving, ostensibly, a knee-jerk reaction to any sort of use of genetic understanding and widespread data collaboration is the opposite of help.
Privacy is important. Voluntary sharing is important as well.
Privacy: something to make you feel comfortable while you are being monitored.
Voluntary: seductively compulsory.
Good: for them but not for you, of course.
Read the article, please. The request is in the welcome package for new students, not the application. Thus, "signals" in the application process are not an issue. The only people getting the request are those who already know that they have been accepted.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Putting it in the orientation packet also gives parents a chance to advise the students NOT to participate.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
particularly liberal. After spending 8 years on the UCB campus and living in many college towns, I can tell you that UCB itself is relatively conservative. The town of Berkeley is liberal and, at times, Berkeley students may be relatively liberal, but the university is not.
The first campus sexual assault case after this plan is implemented will show the true colors of this University in particular and California in general (though after Apple easily ordered jackboots to kick in the door of a journalists' home, I'm not holding my breath).
There are sooooo many ways this information could be used against you, both now and in the future that I could type for hours without even scratching the surface.
Can you provide just a few examples for us?
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I KNEW IT!
UCLA is going to clone their student body, kick out the originals and then they will have malleable minds to warp to their insidious purposes
They Will Subpoena It.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
How long until we hear about a subpoena for these DNA samples? "Well, a crime happened on campus ... guess we better look at those samples you have just to be safe."
bring a bottle, jab the swabs, move on with your life. it's like giving "12345" as your zip code or "888-555-1212" as a phone number at a cash register.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Much like there is separation of "Church and State", there should be separation of "Corporation and State." If corporations existed in the day of the founding fathers like today, they would have added it to the constitution of the United States. It's the same damn problem and it can be solved the same damn way.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
So, let get this straight. *They* send you the bar coded labels, yet it's confidential. Unless those labels are selected and stuffed into the envelope by blindfolded monkeys, they probably know who got which labels. Confidential my ass.
Just like my company asking me to complete an "anonymous" survey, using the email-provided access code.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
How many samples of dog DNA, cat DNA, or other non-human DNA do slashdotters think UC Berkeley is going to get?
If the article is correct, it does sound pretty confidential to me. The student welcome package contains a swab and two (presumably identical) barcodes. The students who volunteer swab themselves in the privacy of their own rooms and return the swab. The only indication of who it came from is the bar code. Assuming that the welcome packets aren't individually tracked, there should be no way to tell which samples come from which students. The results are pretty anonymous, too, though it would be possible to track which IP address looked up which barcode. (So use a library computer, not your own.)
On the whole it sounds like privacy has been pretty well thought-out. If the welcome packets are anonymous (that is, grab one off the pile rather than getting one addressed specifically to me) I'd be willing to do it for some research project. Just "so we can give you tips on diet and lifestyle" sounds pretty weak. I know how my diet and lifestyle affect my health, and I don't want to be nagged about it. If that's the justification I'd probably pass.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Liberal Campus? It will obviously be viewed as a service. Nothing to see here, move along.
I tried to give out my DNA as much as possible. Sadly there were few takers... :(
And yeah, as always this new opportunity to know a lot about genetics and your own DNA will be used against us. It might be confidential for now, but this kind if info is always known for the ones that want to know. Regardless this issue, i still say go for it. We need this.
or some idiot that doesn't know the California Golden Bear is Cal's mascot.
(cue Charlton Heston voice)
pour it from my cold, dead keyboard!
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
UC Berkeley's campus isn't liberal. It's got the most stereotypical frat/sorority ghetto I've ever seen. Its budget is stuffed with defense contractor and other giant corporation contracts, especially oil and telecom corps. Its law school hired John Yoo, the Bush lawyer who wrote the US torture regime rationalizations.
The list goes on. But these "Conservative" (corporatist, or worse) activities are defined by being exclusive, even covert, even secret. While Berkeley's actually "liberal" (or whatever's not "Conservative") activities are usually defined by being public, even extroverted. Then take the mass media's interest in hiding the "Conservative" activities behind a distracting "liberal" show, and you get Berkeley a reputation for being "liberal".
--
make install -not war
This is exactly what will happen (up to isomorphism, of course).
test results will help students make decisions about their diet and lifestyle.
Your test results have shown that you would benefit most from a healthy diet and active lifestyle.
"the test results will help students make decisions about their diet and lifestyle."
I am more worried about UCB students needing DNA analysis to help them with deitary and lifestyle decisions.
Did you notice it was voluntary?
This year. Then after a few years the voluntary line will disappear from the information packet, because the "Researchers want a larger sample size or what-ever."
According to the actual text of the bill, no, the "penalty" for disobeying the (unconstitutional) "requirement" to buy insurance applies to anyone who refuses to buy. Regardless of whether they claim to have "opted out" of any government system or later "want back in"; the rule is just "Didn't buy what we ordered? You get punished." If you want to search for it in the actual bill, look for the terms "shared responsibility" and "requirement".
Back to the original Berkeley article: doesn't it say that there's to be a series of lectures on healthy living for those who choose not to hand over their DNA? Sounds like an attempt to start harassing those who disobey. At least it's less coercive than what this government is doing, by claiming what Pelosi called "essentially unlimited" power to give whatever orders she wants.
Revive the Constitution.
With flamebait lines like that, I don't know how you got a +5 insightful.
As far as one-dimensional thinking goes, yes, everybody knows the liberal-conservative axis is just a loose approximation. Assigning the left-center-right label is sort of like PCA. I read liberal blogs often and I note plenty of eclecticism among liberals; they're not sheep. For instance, all last summer and fall there was tremendous kerfuffle about the scope, shape and size of health care reform. There was lots of disagreement among liberals. So, you are mistaken.
Indeed, the vast majority of judgments about "the vast majority" are bullshit. :-)
$META_SIG_JOKE
what if we were to give sample swabs of animal DNA to another mythical creature what resembles our personalities. This would be like visiting a Buddhist temple on Tibet to get a skin sample of a Yetti to push onto the cotton swab as your way of saying you don't want to be found and you skulk around in dark secluded places on the campus while...swinging from tree to tree like a lumberjack that's fine with me... Maybe you can give campus police a pork shamwich before they get their cotton-swab test so they are more likely to give pig DNA to the computer. Endless possibilities of saying GTFO.
I just think if the test is voluntary, then they shouldn't default to a Test Approval when you don't decline their offer. Voluntary nature means I ask, not a f*ckin' trustee. Comparing this to actual maintenance, you don't see much volunteer work occur because they are pursuing what is necessary. Volunteering only leads to the encroachment of rights to create and accepted practice among a culture.
oh boa, get me another one o' them sausages on a sawzall, we be marketin' this to the bitches ovah in Stanford as a pleasurable method to collect DNA to test for cervical cancuh.
"Not without a warrant, motherfucker."
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
A lot of people are 17 when they enter college.
Oh, hey, these DNA tests show we don't have trouble metabolizing lactose or alcohol!
We should check these results.
Let's drink lots of white russians!
Get off my launchpad!
Tea Party'rs want lower taxes, less government regulation in general, and personal responsibility for your own health care destiny...
I think the "liberal" title should apply to the group that promotes... liberty, not the group trying to control it....
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
The implied algorithm is (approximately) :
10 Take swab, bar codes labels and student ID paperwork.
20 Attach one of the bar codes to the DNA swab and one to your paperwork
Step 15 is missing :
15 Randomly swap individual bar codes with freshman strangers
And possibly
16 Randomly repeat 15
A few enterprising individuals might also wish to make up some random bar code labels too, of the appropriate size and shape. And while they're at it, why not visit the dog pound to collect some random DNA samples too.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"