Owning Ancestry: DNA Commerce

Kathy Hudson's Genetics and Public Policy Institute has really got something with this one: a conference to bring public attentiont to the real issues associated with commerce in human DNA, understood in a rich way with attention to the problems that anthropologists, including Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, one of my favorite rising scholars, have identified. The event is at the National Press Club, and you can register online.

California DNA Law Worrisome Threat to Privacy

In a move that has privacy advocates worried, California voters approved proposition 69, an aggressive DNA-collection program. The new law, officially called the DNA Fingerprint, Unsolved Crime and Innocence Protection Act, will collect data from anyone convicted of, or arrested for a felony. It is expected to add the genetic data of about a million people to California's databank over the five years, making it the largest state-run DNA databank in the country.

Euthanasia = Kevorkian?

Wesley Smith thinks so.