States Storing And Selling Your DNA At Birth Without Explicit Notice Consent (TBA: Hospitals Doctors Testlabs Too)

[grarpamp]

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/11/09/dna-data-from-california-newborn-blood-samples-stored-sold-to-3rd-parties/
http://slashdot.org/~DavidPoole

(KPIX 5) — This might come as a surprise to California natives in
their 20s and early 30s: The state owns your DNA.
Every year about four million newborns in the U.S. get a heel prick at birth,
Danielle Gatto ... was shocked to find, her daughters’ leftover blood
was not thrown away. “The state collects the cards and then uses them
in a database,” she said.
Turns out a non-descript office building in Richmond contains the DNA
of every person born in California since 1983.
Law enforcement can request them. Private companies can buy them to do
research – without your consent. “Everybody has a right to make an
informed decision. That is not for the state to decide for them,” said
Gatto.
The CDPH turned down a request for an interview and wouldn’t explain
why it doesn’t ask permission to sell babies’ blood spots.
Yaniv Erlich with Columbia University and the New York Genome Center
... demonstrated how easy it is to take anonymized DNA,
cross-reference it with online data and connect it to a name. “You
need to have some training in genetics, but once you have that kind of
training the attack is not very complicated to conduct,”
But Gatto thinks the state should have to at least ask her consent
before storing and selling her daughters’ DNA. “We are at the
beginning of a frontier of so much genetic research, there is no
knowing at this point in time what that info could be used for,” said
Gatto. ‘The worst thing as a parent is to think that a decision that
you are making today may negatively affect your children down the
road.”
Gatto's husband – state Assemblyman Mike Gatto – introduced a bill
this year that would have required signed consent... Opposition from
the state and the industry killed it.