Student DNA tests could go wild

"The University of California, Berkeley, has inadvertently stepped into a brewing ethical debate over genetic testing and medical privacy after it asked the incoming freshman class to submit to the campus cotton swabs with DNA samples from their saliva.

The unusual experiment is part of Berkeley's annual "On the Same Page" orientation program, which, according to the university, is designed to "engage incoming students with our faculty in deep and meaningful discussion about important societal issues." The project has already been sparking such a debate, but the initial backlash has, by officials' own admission, caught the university by surprise, which doesn't say great things about the folks running this program.

Now the university is the target of an Assembly bill that urges the University of California to refrain from asking its students for genetic samples and that would deduct state funding from any programs such as the one that's at the heart of the controversy. Critics worry that the project is subtly coercive; want to know whether the private foundation funding the experiment has a vested interest in the expansion of DNA testing; and suggest that Berkeley could be violating the law by operating a clinical laboratory without a license.

The university emphasizes that no student is being forced to participate. "Lost in this tempest is that the program is voluntary and completely anonymous," Dean Mark Schlissel told me. He says the campus is exempt from those medical laboratory requirements. He won't disclose the name of the foundation that is funding the project to spare them from this controversy, but says it has no financial stake in the outcome and is not affiliated with any company."

Read the rest of the article by Steven Greenhut at the OC Register