Tuesday, May 25, 2010

UK: Newborn Babies's DNA Being Secretly Collected and Stored

Victoria Fletcher writes on the Express.co.uk:

Blood samples from millions of newborn babies are being stored without their parents’ knowledge, it emerged yesterday.

The massive DNA files can be consulted by a range of organisations including the police, coroners and medical researchers, without having to ask the children’s families.

In a sinister example of Britain’s slide into a Big Brother society, hospitals have admitted storing the blood samples of four million newborns during routine heel-prick tests.

Official guidance says the samples should be kept for at least five years, but some hospitals have been storing them since 1984. The disclosure of the secret database’s existence prompted calls for an official inquiry into why the information is being stored in such a covert way.

More here.

Hat-tip: Personal Health Information Privacy

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home