The Genetic Nondiscrimination Act of 2003 (S. 1053) was passed unanimously by the senate supposedly prohibiting discrimination in employment or job promotion on the basis of genetic information and/or family history. Exempted was the right of employers test for work associated hazards. In addition it prohibits insurance companies from using genetic information or family history in determining who it will insure or what rates an individual or family will pay for coverage.
The fact that insurance companies were specifically identified as potential abusers of genetic information is clearly a statement that, attempts to abuse the information or to gain access to it was already being done.
The newborn DNA databases in all 50 states is used in medical and research applications and experiments and can and usually do, include links to medical records of the entire family history of the tested individual. Blood and tissue specimens can be preserved for infinity and re-tested multiple times. Even though parents or individuals can request destruction of the samples, you have no guarantee that the samples were destroyed, and regardless, the information that was gleaned from the samples remains on record…..meaning you have in essence destroyed nothing.
Data mining, now done routinely on multiple levels by our state and federal governments, is providing information that has been gathered by ChoicePoint of Georgia, along with other companies who make a business out of gathering and selling your personal information to the FBI, and any other intelligence or government agency. In the specific case of the FBI, there are still a few restrictions in place that disallow information gathering on US Citizens without probable cause. With companies such as ChoicePoint, ethical or moral questions never apply to the more than one billion dollars they have been paid by the federal government to data mine your personal information.
ChoicePoint has made clear its intent to construct a data base on every individual in the US and to include everything from genetic information, medical records, credit history, family history, spending habits, voting records, and every other type of information it can find on you and to compile it into billions of files that are for sale to insurance companies, researchers and experimenters, and to the government. Companies such as ChoicePoint provide the end-run around the law by compiling and then selling as a commodity, information to agencies like the FBI, or huge insurance companies who might otherwise be prevented from having or gathering the information.
The attempts to track us and use the information about our genetic history don’t stop here. The US military now has made it mandatory that military personnel be DNA tested. The reason given is that it will make battlefield identification easier. And it would. But that isn’t why they are doing it and it doesn’t explain why DNA data is being stored for 75 years and subjected to massive testing and experimentation.
As of December 2002, the Repository, now known as the
“Armed Forces Repository of Specimen Samples for the Identificationof Remains,”
6. contained the DNA of approximately3.2 million service members.
7 According to a recent DOD directive, the “provision of specimen samples by military members shall be mandatory.”
8. The direction to a soldier, sailor, airman,or marine to contribute a DNA sample is a lawful order which, if disobeyed, subjects the service member to prosecution
under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
9. If convicted at court-martial for the offense of violating a lawful general order, the service member carries the lifelong stigma of a federal felony conviction, and faces a maximum punishment of a dishonorable discharge, confinement for two years, total forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and reduction to the lowest enlisted grade.”
http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/07-08-2003.pdf(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
