DNA taken from babies in Leicestershire

A worrying story over at the Leicester Mercury:

More than 10,000 babies in Leicestershire had their DNA stored on an NHS database last year without the proper consent of their parents, it has been claimed.

Blood samples are taken from newborn infants around the country in routine heel prick tests to screen for serious health problems.

But it has emerged they are banked in databases for years by hospitals, and could be accessed by police looking to identify criminal suspects.

Please do read the whole thing. Are you a parent whose child was born in this period? If so, were you informed that this was happening? Big Brother Watch would like to hear from you.

By Alex Deane

Comments

[Rebel Saint]

Herein lies a catch22.

I don't give these people consent for anything because I don't trust them. And because they can't be trusted the consent means nothing anyway.

So how can we stop them just doing whatever the hell they like?

[mrmovie]

dont consent to the heel prick test, then go to a private hospital to get the tests done.
hope that you never get hit by a bus etc, or need a blood test for anything etc etc.
its difficult to fight the system head on.

[SadButMadLad]

It's been done for years now. Pretty routine. Most hospitals keep the samples for only a few years. Even if they police do want access to the samples it's not the same as doing a DNA search on the DNA database. They can't scan all the samples. They have to get individual samples. Mostly such access is done for identification purposes. I doubt that it would happen for identifying criminal suspects since most hospitals don't keep the sameples for that long. Just imagine the storage. It's not like data being stored on hard disks. They have to keep vials/testtubes/whatever.

[Name]

@ Sad: they have to keep vials.

Isn't the DNA code identified then simply stored on a hard drive along with the name/parents names etc?