Newborn DNA Registries Raise Privacy Concerns
By Jed Stuber · May 20, 2010
From The Heartland Institute’s Health Care News, written by Sarah McIntosh:
Parents are expressing outrage after discovering through recent news reports that their newborns’ DNA has been stored or even turned over to the Armed Forces lab to build a national registry, without obtaining their consent.
It is not unusual for infants’ DNA, obtained either via neonatal methods or soon after birth, to be tested for potential genetic problems. Several states store each new baby’s DNA and may even turn it over for research purposes. But these facts are not widely known, and the reports raised concerns about the privacy of health information.