Damned by Our Own DNA.

I read today that the NHS is to start mapping the DNA of every baby born in the UK, and I’m not happy about it. They say it’s so they can forecast everybody’s susceptibility to particular conditions. That way they can be ready for it, treat it earlier, and in so doing increase longevity and general health. The Health Secretary says it will change the NHS from ‘a service which diagnoses and treats ill health to one that predicts and prevents it.’ Sounds good, doesn’t it? It’s a nice bit of writing, too, and if there’s one thing which attracts my favour it’s a nice bit of writing. This one sounds like something a good scriptwriter might have written (and probably did.) But I’m still not happy about it.

It feels to me like just another way for the system to keep tabs on us. A person’s DNA is their own affair, so it’s another invasion of privacy. If you commit a crime you can expect to have your DNA mapped. That’s reasonable. And there might be other reasons to have it done, such as searching for you ancestry. That’s voluntary. But a blanket process applied to every baby born in the UK? Extend that to its inevitable conclusion and one day every citizen of the land will be trapped on a database controlled by an unsavoury partnership of artificial intelligence and the Establishment. That’s going too far because surely people don’t expect that it’s only the NHS that will be using it. It has more than a whiff of excessive state control about it.

It surprises me that nobody mentioned the security aspect. Having everybody’s DNA on the database will make the police’s job easier, won’t it? The reason I’m surprised is that the politicians only have to play the security card these days and the denizens of Middle England, who mostly have trouble seeing beyond their garden gate, fall to their knees and beg for the benefit. But what happens when the state decides to look for signs of criminal proclivity in this all-encompassing DNA record, and choose to lock the potentially guilty ones behind bars before they can commit a crime. I believe there’s a film based on just such an eventuality.

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Today is the summer equinox – Midsummer’s Night. I didn’t see any moths and Titania hasn’t called on me yet, but I suppose there’s still time.