Blood center to collect DNA of donors

[TechBear_Seattle]

Blood center to collect DNA of donors

For the first time, the Puget Sound Blood Center will begin collecting, testing and storing the DNA of blood donors.

Donors may opt out of the program, part of a study funded by the Defense Department (emphasis added) to develop better ways of identifying blood types. And the Blood Center is firm that the effort will be limited to that purpose and not shared with the government.

Even so, privacy watchdogs worry that this latest move is just part of an increasingly long list of governments and other agencies that are storing people's DNA coding -- with few laws overseeing its use.

"There are no real practical limits on what can be done with that DNA information," said Barry Steinhardt, who heads the American Civil Liberties Union's national Technology and Liberty Project in Washington, D.C. "People ought to be very afraid that these samples are going to be used for some other purpose."

The full story is available from the Seattle Times: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003544880_blooddna28m0.html

[Trillo]

1. Another property grab

and incentive not to donate blood.

Thieves.

[PSPS]

2. Hehe. Opt-out instead of opt-in

They always use that canard when they're up to something nefarious. It's kind of like the "opt-out" do-not-call list where they know 99% will want to "opt out." They avoid the rational "opt in" because they know nobody will.

[Hestia]

3. I've been wondering how they would start doing DNA testing

on the populace, just never thought of blood donations. Supposedly all newborns DNA is now collected and stored in a databank. (Just what I heard on the internets street corner.) They've got all our financial, school, employment records, just one more record to put into the Axciom and Choice Point databanks.

[salin]

4. I would thnk that this would decrease the flow of blood donations.

That woudln't be good in a time of a health emergency.

[ClintonTyree]

5. It'a already hard enough to keep blood supplies....

at nominal level let alone emergency levels. There is a dearth of blood donors in this day and age and the bulk of people who do donate on a regular basis are baby boomers who will soon cease donating because of advanced age. Something like this is going to hurt them even further. And who's to say the government isn't already collecting DNA analysis on these donations on the sly? I don't trust our government one iota.

[salin]

6. and what do they do with the data?

Sell it to insurance companies? Put it in a Choice Point database with all sorts of other data that they have already gathered upon us?

[NorthernSpy]

7. That's all, folks! This universal donor has donated her last pint...

That's the trouble with altruism: someone always does something to make you regret it.

Can't trust anyone anymore.

Sorry -- I'm just really disgusted by this. It's such an incredible abuse of the benevolence of ordinary people.