Victory in Minnesota: No More State DNA Data Base for Newborns
The state of Minnesota created a mandatory data base. The state collected the DNA of every newborn infant.
In the name of the privacy rights of infants, a small group of nine Minnesota families sued the state. They won the case.
The state Supreme Court decided that state law does not authorize state health agencies to take and keep a blood sample of each child.
The state’s position is that this information is the property of the state, to be used for research purposes.
This really meant that specific career-enhancing researchers could get a state subsidy — free blood samples — at the expense of the children’s privacy. It was theft, pure and simple.
The case was brought by the Citizen’s Council for Health Freedom.
President Twila Brase said at the time last year, “We are cheered by this good news. When our organization discovered the state health department’s baby DNA warehouse in 2003 and the use of newborn DNA for genetic research without parent consent, we determined to do all that we could to stop this practice. No state law expressly permits these activities.”She said, “We are pleased that these nine families were willing to sue the state of Minnesota. Their action and this decision now secures the genetic privacy rights and informed written consent rights of all Minnesota parents and newborn citizens.”
There are 18 states that followed the lead of Minnesota’s bureaucracy. You can find out about this here: ItsMyDNA.org.
This is a defense of property rights. “We’re saying that this DNA is the property of the children and the state doesn’t have a right to claim ownership.” This is the right legal issue to invoke. “We are not government subjects of research by virtue of being born, and our DNA is not government property.”
We are back to eugenics. The state in the past has asserted the right to sterilize people who are unfit genetically. These laws were widespread from around 1910 through the 1930's. They were not removed from the statute books until the 1950's. Had Hitler won World War II in Europe, and therefore had the textbooks been favorable to him and the Nazi sterilization laws that were copied from U.S. state laws, these laws would still be on the books, and they would be enforced. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld them in the case of Buck v. Bell (1927).
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Published on October 19, 2012. The original is here.
UPDATE (10-14-19)
“Unfortunately, said Brase, the Minnesota legislature changed the law, pulling the newborn screening program out of the protective genetic privacy law, and storage began again without parental consent on Aug. 1, 2014. So, for the past five years, newborn DNA has been stored and used by the state health department in Minnesota without parent consent.”
https://www.cchfreedom.org/cchf.php/1553