GENEALOGY-DNA-L Archives

Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2007-09 > 1188697028


From:
Subject: Re: [DNA] DNA Security and protection
Date: Sat, 1 Sep 2007 21:37:08 EDT




So, what exactly would this law prohibit? As I understand it we have an
unfounded fear and we want the government to pass a law to protect us from it.
All laws have unintended consequences and COSTS. Be careful what you ask for.

In a message dated 9/1/2007 8:17:36 P.M. Central Daylight Time,
writes:

Since we seem to have been drifting from the original topic I have
changed it to start a new thread. It may become short lived, but at
least we can discuss it.

I suspect that there isn't a project coordinator who has not met with
resistance from potential participants because they were concerned
that their DNA "might" be used by insurance companies, employers or
law enforcement/government in some unanticipated
manner. Declarations from the testing companies usually do not
defuse these concerns. I have had people back out because a relative
in the medical industry recommended they not do it, a friend/relative
in law enforcement told them absolutely don't do it and I have had
people express concern about the insurance companies getting their
hands on their DNA. Sometimes I have been able to talk them down
from the fears, but in others there was no way. There is the other
factor where someone is afraid we might find out some family secret
and there is no way to talk them down.

So how do we put something in place that will totally dispel these concerns?

Speaking for the US members of this list. We have a lot of smart
people on this list who hail from all across the country. Maybe it
is time we had Congress pass a law to firmly and precisely set a
level of protection on the DNA testing industry. Now the testing
companies are not going to be too keen on this idea of government
mucking in any way with their business, but it can actually help them
if this issue were very clear.

Many of us personally know members of Congress and the rest can lobby
theirs to support such a bill. We have lawyers, doctors and
scientists here who could offer up the parts of a piece of
legislation that would cover all anticipated abuse aspects of
recreational DNA testing and simply make them illegal with very large
penalties applied if anyone violates the law.

I suggest we could write the bill between us and then submit it in
parallel to several legislators urging them in turn to submit the
bill to Congress or to co-sponsor it. Then we can activate the rest
of the community to lobby their representatives and senators to pass
the bill. If we can accomplish this it would remove a great many
concerns people express and it would for once and all clarify this
part of our hobby.

Does anyone else think this might be a useful exercise?


>I doubt if insurance companies are a big factor. They can simply
>require you to submit a DNA sample to obtain coverage. They also
>would want a chain of custody and are very aware of the fallout of
>obtaining data surreptitiously.
>
> A bigger problem might be law enforcement. One of our project
> members reported the seizure of DNA in Alabama by a county sheriff
> from a testing laboratory. This was apparently either a paternity
> or forensics laboratory, although I was never able to follow up on the
story.
>
> Bob Stafford
>
>marianne dillow <> wrote:
>
>Privacy issues is a definite concern with many of us. No one can
>tell me if a insurance company got hold of our results that they
>wouldn't discriminate against us. I will never believe otherwise
>until Congess and the President makes it a law and then I have my
>doubts. There are "bugs" in every new venture whatever it may be. I
>for one am not willing to take the chance.
>
>
>-------------------------------
>To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to
> with the word 'unsubscribe'
>without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message


Orin R. Wells
Wells Family Research Association
P. O. Box 5427
Kent, Washington 98064-5427
<>
http://www.wells.org
Subscribe to the "Wells-L" list on RootsWeb







************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at
http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour

This thread: