Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007

It was presented to President Bush on April 14, 2008 and signed into law on April 24, 2008. It sounds ok, right? Newborn screening to save lives? Doesn't sound harmful. Our newborns are screened in the hospitals already with a blood test and hearing test.

Now wait! It is a baby DNA database!

Did you know that this law requires the collection of every newborn's DNA? What about the privacy rights of parents and children? You can't just swab a suspected criminal for DNA without good reason. Newborns are treated as lesser human beings than suspects of a crime? Am I reading this right? In most paternity cases, you have to have a court order to verify paternity of a child via paternity tests, yet newborns and their parents have no rights for the government?

The bill supposedly allows for this DNA to be used in experiments and testing.

Doesn't this go beyond the constitutional limits of the government? There is TOO MUCH GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT in our lives already.

Does this mean that the government and their "special interest groups" will have legal access to our medical records now? I would like to know what this means and what it opens us up to in the future.

This has already been signed into law. Wonder why the public didn't hear more about this? I missed it somehow.

Christopher J. Dodd (D-CT) sponsored this bill.
Co-Sponsors of this bill can be seen here. Oh yeah, Hillary Clinton is one of the co-sponsors.