Plan for DNA Database Assailed

Critics are calling a plan by the U.S. military to establish a DNA database on all 1.5 million service members--the largest genetic identification project in history--the first step toward Big Brother.

Civil-rights advocates say the project does not have adequate privacy safeguards and could open the door to “genetic Social Security numbers,” the biological equivalent of credit rating agencies and new types of discrimination based on genetic predispositions to conditions such as alcoholism and cancer.

THE ARGUMENTS: Genetic information “is the most intimate information we have. Do you want things like a predisposition to psychological illness disclosed without your permission?” said Andre Kimbrell, an attorney with the Foundation on Economic Trends, a biotechnology watchdog group in Washington. He said the military database could be the basis of a “massive invasion of privacy.”

But the Defense Department insists that genetic fingerprinting is needed to identify remains of soldiers killed in action. The plan, announced Friday, is to store DNA dog tags in the form of bar-coded blood and tissue samples of all U.S. soldiers. It is the first effort of its kind, said Maj. Victor Weedn, chief of the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory.

Weedn calls the project a humanitarian step that will help identify badly damaged remains of soldiers killed in battle to reunite them with their families. Genetic identification has already been used to reassemble the bodies of soldiers killed in the Gulf War. Keeping samples of all soldiers’ blood and oral swabs could help “eliminate the tomb of the unknown soldier,” Weedn said.

Because of the enormous scope of the military’s project, some experts say it deserves greater scrutiny before going forward.

“Soon enough there will be people wanting national (genetic) databanks for everyone, for you and me, like Social Security numbers,” says Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Minnesota.

“There are issues still to be addressed by the Department of Defense and the Congress as to rules and principles” of genetic registries, Caplan said.

Critics say that, along with projects to genetically fingerprint convicts being developed by the FBI and law enforcement authorities in several states, the Defense Department DNA files could be a threat to privacy if used inappropriately.

Genetic identification technology already is being used in criminal cases to link even hair or blood left at the scene of a crime with its owner, but its validity as evidence is still under dispute.

Weedn said that the military’s genetic database will be used only to identify war dead and that the military does not intend to share information on its soldiers. However, he said the database could be subject to a subpoena.

“I’m sure that cases will come up with court orders” for blood or other specimens for testing, “and we’d have to comply,” Weedn said.

BACKGROUND: Besides linking tissue to its owner, genetic databases also could help identify individuals with a predisposition to certain diseases. The National Institutes of Health human genome project is seeking to map human DNA to establish the function of each part of the chain and is finding clues as to which individuals may be prone to heart disease and certain psychiatric conditions.

Although such information could help in the prevention and treatment of disease, privacy advocates fear that it could be used to exclude people from jobs or insurance coverage.

“We’ll have a new kind of discrimination based not on race or sex but on genetic predisposition. This could be the start of a biological underclass,” Kimbrell said.

Kimbrell argues that privacy protection has been inadequate and that new technologies broaden opportunities for abuse. He says government agencies regularly share information on individuals, such as their Social Security numbers or medical records, without their knowledge or permission.

Mistakes on a person’s genetic “credit rating” could have even more profound consequences than the widespread errors now found in financial databases on individuals’ credit records, he argued.

OUTLOOK: A bill sponsored by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) would establish privacy safeguards on various types of databases maintained on individuals, but some critics think the move by the Army is premature without this protection.

The economic incentives to develop the genetic database market are large. The market for products using a gene-identification technology known as polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, could amount to about $1 billion to $2 billion a year, industry analysts say. Pharmaceutical giant Hoffman-La Roche last year paid $300 million to buy PCR technology from a Northern California biotechnology company called Cetus.

The Army plans to use Hoffman-La Roche’s PCR technology to analyze its blood specimens. Analysts say the large-scale experience using the process in the military database could help the company develop the product for law enforcement and other uses, such as storing the genes of babies born so they could be identified in cases of kidnaping or other foul play.