Fergie's Tech Blog

VA to Seek DNA of All Veterans?

A very, very brief snippet over on Militay.com heralds this scary piece of Orwellian news:

Researchers are mapping the human genome for the day when physicians will use a patient's genetic profile as preventive medicine. To that end, the Department of Veterans Affairs plans to create a genetic database from potentially millions of VA patients.

The VA plans to collect the first 100,000 samples in October, 2007 and foresees a database as large as the number of veterans who are willing to contribute samples of their DNA. VA also plans to write rules regarding handling a person's genetic profile while using it in research.

If anyone has a pointer to further details on this, please leave a comment with a pointer or drop me an e-mail (you can find my e-mail address in the 'profile' link of the blog).

posted by Fergie @ 5/02/2006 09:01:00 AM