Bill to Protect the Genetic Profiles of Californians Clears Assembly Floor – AB 170
By Christopher Simmons,
California Newswire
| 06. 03. 2015
Untitled Document
A closely watched bill by Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Glendale) to strengthen notice requirements for the storage of newborn blood samples passed the California State Assembly by a vote of 55-9. The legislation, AB 170, will ensure parents are fully informed of their rights when it comes to the retention, storage and eventual medical research conducted on their children’s dried blood spot samples. It would further require the destruction of stored samples upon request of a child reaching adulthood.
Each year, thousands of newborns are screened at birth for genetic and metabolic disorders, saving countless lives as a result. AB 170 will do nothing to affect this important public health policy. Rather, the measure addresses the storage of samples after these lifesaving tests take place. It will require parents to be notified that their child’s blood and DNA will be kept for purposes of experimentation and require the state to obtain a signature from parents acknowledging that they have received information about the storage of their child’s blood sample and subsequent use in research.
“Newborn blood screening is an...
Related Articles
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 07.11.2024
Louise Perry’s recent article in The Spectator cautions against “The quiet return of eugenics,” a threat she locates in preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic disorders. The technology is billed as a way for parents undergoing IVF to select which embryo to implant based on information about each embryo’s genetic risk factors and traits. These reports, she says, give parents “a very full picture of the adult that embryo could become”––from their child’s risk of developing different diseases to their “likely...
GATTACA was released in 1997, but — remarkably — is even more relevant now than it was then, as the technologies whose social implications it explores have developed considerably.
On Thursday, June 13, the California Film Institute presented GATTACA to a sold-out house at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center as part of their Science on Screen series. CGS Associate Director Katie Hasson offered framing for the film and participated in a Q+A discussion.
The film’s plot explicitly involves...
By Ellie Kincaid, Retraction Watch | 06.18.2024
Nature has retracted a 2002 paper from the lab of Catherine Verfaillie purporting to show a type of adult stem cell could, under certain circumstances, “contribute to most, if not all, somatic cell types.”
The retracted article, “Pluripotency of...