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Comment by s1artibartfast | Hacker News Reader

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All 50 states require DNA samples at birth. Some states destroy the blood spots after a year, 12 states store them for at least 21 years.

California stores DNA samples indefinitely and has collected from every baby born after 1983. They mainly use the data for research but also sell it to private companies.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/califo...

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> California stores DNA samples indefinitely and has collected from every baby born after 1983. They mainly use the data for research but also sell it to private companies.

And people are fine with that?

What can they do with the DNA other than checking crimes or mapping genomes?

sell it to insurers to bar people with genetic disorders and predispositions from acquiring life, disability and long-term care insurance.

GINA prohibits discrimination on genotype by health insurance and employers, but those kinds of insurance are left in as loopholes.

(I support the California system, it helps a lot in medical research, I just want the loophole patched.)

source: https://archive.fo/SHfBT

> What can they do with the DNA other than checking crimes or mapping genomes?

"Does your husband know that he is not the father?"-type blackmailing for example.

Planting false DNA evidence on people could be a thing.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-kept-macron-dista...

> French President Emmanuel Macron refused a Kremlin request that he take a Russian COVID-19 test when he arrived to see President Vladimir Putin this week, to prevent Russia getting hold of Macron's DNA, two sources in Macron's entourage told Reuters.

i can think of so many ways to get the visitor's DNA, like he will naturally lose some hair somewhere, or use the toilet, etc. Maybe the refusal is more a reaction to the mistrust implied in the request to take "their" Test

Getting a data set with the DNA of almost all people in your state is a different beast though.

Finding people from remote relatives and medical inferences.

If someone has access to enough nicely distributed DNA samples they can correctly identify you from your DNA even if you are not in any database only based on your family tree.

Varitasium video for reference: https://youtu.be/KT18KJouHWg

This is generally time consuming and done to identify criminals but it is very simple.

FWIW - neither Macron nor Scholz are fine with that and based their refusal to take a Russian-controlled PCR test on genetic privacy.

What can they do to prevent it?

Avoiding giving birth in California seems like an option.

Almost nobody knows that the state does it.

“State Laws Regarding the Retention and Use of Residual Newborn Screening Blood Samples”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3065077/

Why do they need to keep the samples? Can't they analyze it and just store the data, or is the comparison purely a chemical reaction?

I imagine that the tests done routinely at childbirth are not a full genome sequencing. The samples can be kept for full sequencing later in the event of a sale or research project.

It looks like you shared an AMP link. AMP is controversial because of concerns over privacy and the Open Web [0].

Fully cached AMP pages like the one you shared are especially problematic [0].

Maybe check out the canonical page instead:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-biobank-dna-babies-w...

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_di...

AMP was a great idea and would have contibuted in the simplification and un-bloatification of the web. It's a shame that it died.

It died because it was abused and misused. Good riddance.

Point taken, I shared what I had because I was on mobile and didn't have the time and patience to get the alternative link.

The real link is that little chain-link icon at the top-right of the page, above the actual content.

Google has become toxic to the web, alas.

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