Blog note: As in the days of Noah. All flesh was corrupted. Only Noah was perfect in his generation (not genetic corruption). End of note.

Congrats on the new baby. Want to screen your baby’s DNA? Part Four in a Series.

By Susan Scutti, CNN. Updated 9:23 AM ET, Sun January 6, 2019

Could newborn genetic screening lead to discrimination?

Powell, who is conducting her own NIH-sponsored study of newborn screening, said infant sequencing not only raises concerns about potential future insurance discrimination but also potential future “employment discrimination or social discrimination.”

Yet, catching genetic disorders in children before they develop symptoms could positively change lives since the earlier treatment begins, the better, she explained. Powell worries about access: “It’s not fair if only those children born to families who can afford to pay for it have the ability to receive it.”

“But could we handle it on a public health scale basis? My main concern is we can overwhelm the system,” said Powell. “There’s a shortage of trained geneticists and trained counselors out there and if we open Pandora’s box, will it be in the best interests of the child?”

Privacy, both personal and extended, is the main concern of Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that works to ensure rights and freedoms are protected as the use of technology grows.

“The genome isn’t just about you — it contains information about your parents, your siblings, and your own progeny,” Tien told CNN in an email. “So from a privacy standpoint, DNA data is a far more sensitive kind of health information than a sports injury, and it challenges our conventional norms of consent because you’re effectively making decisions about other people’s DNA.”