<http://www.goupstate.com/docs/Opinion/Editorials/5878.asp>http://www.goupstate.com/docs/Opinion/Editorials/5878.asp
J. Cieciel
Published: February 21, 2002
State of mistrust
South Carolina agencies continue to violate citizens' privacy. This
time the state is distributing our children's DNA. Lawmakers need to
institute firmer rules on the collection and distribution of
individuals' personal information.
_________________________________________________________________
Once again South Carolina's state government has proven that it
can't
be trusted with the personal information it demands from its
citizens.
South Carolinians had hoped it was a fluke when the state sold the
information on 3.5 million people's driver's licenses to a New
Hampshire company without their permission or even notification.
Citizens thought that the outrage from that incident surely would
make
state officials more responsible about how they handle the personal
information citizens are forced to give the state.
But last week South Carolinians learned that -- without their
knowledge or permission -- the state had created a DNA library on
our
children. By law, babies are tested for specific genetic diseases
after they are born. The state Department of Health and
Environmental
Control has been saving all of those samples since 1995 in a special
deep freeze facility.
State officials told us not to worry. These genetic blueprints of
our
children are safe with them. This information could not be misused.
This week we learned that the information has already been misused.
Without the permission of these DNA donors or their parents, the
state
has given some of the samples to a genetics laboratory and gave
others
to the State Law Enforcement Division to help start a DNA databank
there.
Are there any parents left who still trust the state with this
information? It's not likely.
Do South Carolinians want a genetics lab experimenting on their
children's DNA? Did state officials ever think to ask? And what
right
does SLED have to include our innocent children's DNA in its
databank?
Legislative remedies for this problem have been discussed in
Columbia.
They range from the immediate destruction of the DNA samples held by
DHEC to a system in which parents can instruct the state not to keep
their children's samples. Clearly, the state must institute a
process
that -- at a bare minimum -- requires DHEC to get parental
permission
to keep the samples.
[...]
