According to the Citizens’ Council on Health Care (CCHC), the state of Minnesota has illegally collected and claimed ownership of the DNA of 780,000 children across the state. The DNA of 42, 210 of those children has been given to genetic researchers without parental consent.
In the last legislative session, Minnesota Governor Pawlenty addressed this issue by vetoing the Minnesota Department of Health’s DNA warehousing bill. This bill would have exempted the Department from laws which require written parental consent to store newborn DNA for future analysis and research. Thanks to the veto, the Minnesota Genetic Privacy law (which requires parental consent for storage) remains in effect.
However, despite this veto, the Minnesota Department of Health continues to warehouse DNA without consent. Twila Brase, president of CCHC, says that these actions are ” a direct violation of the genetic privacy and DNA property rights of parents and children.”
In a press conference held last week, CCHC called on Governor Pawlenty to require his Commissioner of Health to hold the health department accountable to this law. To learn more about this issue, click here.
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