UC Berkeley Asking Incoming Students For DNA 468
peterofoz writes "The students will be asked to voluntarily submit a DNA sample. The cotton swabs will come with two bar code labels. One label will be put on the DNA sample and the other is kept for the students' own records. The confidential process is being overseen by Jasper Rine, a campus professor of Genetics and Development Biology, who says the test results will help students make decisions about their diet and lifestyle." No word in the story on just what "confidential" means — who will have access to the results, how long they'll be kept, or what else they might someday be used for. Will the notoriously liberal Berkeley campus see this as a service or an invasion of privacy?
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
I realize this is slashdot and all, but if you read the article it states: "Once the DNA sample is sent in and tested, it will show the student’s ability to tolerate alcohol, absorb folic acid and metabolize lactose."
Not sure if they will test for other things or not, but that's the list provided thus far.
Re:Both, of course (Score:2, Informative)
You mean the lies you parroted back? Get us some proof of your outrageous claims, or everyone will be forced to conclude you are full of shit. Your claims are so outrageous, normal Americans will need a lot of convincing. So where's your proof? And right wing blogs don't count, as right wing bloggers simply don't care about facts, this is a game to them and lies are just part of the strategy.
Re:Barcode is moot (Score:3, Informative)
I just thought I'd point out that the whole barcode thing is irrelevant. They may as well put your name on the sample, because as soon as you seek to turn in your code and discover the result, you're mapped back to the sample.
From TFA:
"The results of the test will be put in a secure online database where students will be able to retrieve their results by using their bar code."
There doesn't seem to be any indication that you'd have to identify yourself to retrieve the results - they give you a code, you enter it in & see the results. If none of the samples are linked to names, it doesn't really matter that you could look at other results. So I don't think you'd be mapped back to the sample.
How quickly we forget: "posture photos" (Score:5, Informative)
From the 1940s to the 1970s, Ivy League colleges took naked pictures of every incoming freshman [wikipedia.org], supposedly for use in scientific studies of the students' posture.
I am not making this up. See, e.g., this Times coverage from 1995 [nytimes.com].
I'm not going to make any kind of normative statement about whether people should say Yes to Cal's offer, here, but just wanted to point out that weird-ass instrusions into student privacy are nothing new.
How is this different from (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League_nude_posture_photos [wikipedia.org]
Re:I'm torn (Score:4, Informative)
You think the school is going to negotiate with every student on campus? They haven't the manpower or the resources or the time.
There will be a set contact, and you can either take it or leave it, I imagine. And since we don't know the details of that arrangement, I'd err on the side of caution.
Re:Both, of course (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, "liberals and conservatives are all the same" is a popular lie put out by conservatives. As is "Political correctness," "Rewarding poverty," and "Stepping on self employment." All of which are actually things conservatives do. Which makes them different from liberals.
Re:Both, of course (Score:2, Informative)
Libertarianism makes us less free. We need government to protect the weak from the powerful, libertarians want to place us all into wage slavery for their corporate overlords. All libertarians believe they will be the overlords, which is why they want the freedom to own wage slaves. This is why libertarians want to do away with anything that will protect the weak from economic coercion, backed up by private property protectors with guns. (the only true function of government in Libertarian eyes is protecting the haves from the have-nots.)
Yes, it is (Score:5, Informative)
Read the article, please. The request is in the welcome package for new students, not the application. Thus, "signals" in the application process are not an issue. The only people getting the request are those who already know that they have been accepted.
Re:DO NOT WILLINGLY SUBMIT YOUR DNA!!! (Score:4, Informative)
... umm, did you miss the part of the story where they *aren't* storing the student's identity with the DNA? I could walk outside for an hour or two and get a couple hundred random DNA samples from random strangers for study, and have absolutely no more idea who they belong to. Since our DNA just sort of falls off of us terribly easily.
The profiles aren't connected to students names, records, SSN, identities, nothing. Just a random number encoded in a barcode. The only way anyone can know that 123456789 happens to be you is if you tell them or show them your barcode.
Its research. And an interesting service.
Yes, the tinfoil hat wearing can argue that between IP logs and cookies and such, someone could probably figure out your identity if they really wanted to.
But then they can also just get your DNA from your *skin cells* that you shed all the time. And if they were going to be nefarious like that, the usage of that DNA sample for any random purpose against your interests would probably be legal: you have no expectation of privacy there.
Re:Both, of course (Score:4, Informative)
Oh please. The tea party movement started as a campaign to mail tea bags to congress. Sure the teabagger label may have first been used by detractors, but it didn't come out of the blue, and it was quickly adopted by it's proponents - fully aware of the double entendre. It was only after Fox news decided to sponsor the movement that they realized that some uptight conservative might google "teabagger" and have their delicate sensibilities upset that spokespeople for the movement decided they were the tea party movement, not the tea bag movement. Libertarians may be wrong about just about everything, but at least they (usually) have a sense of humor. The same can't be said for Fox news's target demographics.
I would never say that everyone who attends tea party rallies was racist, but there's some ugly stuff percolating in the movement. Ever since the GOP decided to swell it's ranks by picking up southern defectors from the democratic party in the wake of the civil rights movement, they've been plagued by racism. If the tea party movement doesn't want to be associated with racism, they should clean up their house. Speakers should shame protesters with racist placards. They should stop pushing the Obama is a Muslim line. But they won't. Dick Armey and Liz Cheney are smart people. They know that denouncing racism and racists in the strongest possible terms will alienate a small, but important part of their base. They need to play to the fears and insecurities of lower middle class white America - and those fears and insecurities have a distinctive racial bias. Why else would immigration and affirmative action (which, outside of academia is for all intents and purposes defunct) be such important issues?
Re:Both, of course (Score:5, Informative)
Someone who would be described as liberal in the US has what the rest of the world would call "center left economic opinions" - not socialist.
Libertarian, on the other hand means bat-shit-crazy wherever you go.
Re:Both, of course (Score:3, Informative)
"Folks who think for themselves and tend not to vote Republican?"
Really? Let's look at that statement logically:
You are saying that the people who think for themselves tend not to vote for the people who allow them to make their own decisions? In other words, "People who think for themselves tend to vote for people to do the thinking for them", right?
You mastery of logic amazes me.
Re:Curious (Score:3, Informative)
Pretty easily. If the cops have access to your DNA, and they're searching through DNA for a suspect, there's a chance they'll hit upon your DNA. If it's not in the database, that's not possible. Imagine the DNA database is a phone book. They're looking for Tom Smith, your name is Jon Smith, they misread things and arrest you. If your name was never in the phone book in the first place, that would never have happened.
Re:Both, of course (Score:3, Informative)
Bush was in fact elected in a very undemocratic manner.
Bush was elected legally. He did not steal the election, although an attempt to steal the election was made, but it failed.
Bush did in fact expand the power of the government, and restrict indivdual liberties more than any president in living memory.
Um... I believe the current president is considered "in living memory". Yet, all those who screamed that Bush was taking liberties are now strangely silent. It makes me believe that those people were not worried about losing their liberties. They were simply using it as a club to beat the 'R' over the head with.
And as for Bush taking liberties away... I could do everything I could do in 2001 that I could do in 2009. Exactly zero of my liberties were taken. For that matter, I don't know of anyone who lost any freedoms whatsoever under Bush. I do know that I am now no longer able to provide my own health coverage, however.
Bush's foreign policy did in fact benefit Haliburton a lot more than it did the US.
Obama's domestic spending has done more to benefit unions a lot more than it does the US. (Modified that for you)
Of course, we have to remember that Bush is the bad guy, Obama is not. It doesn't matter that they do the same stuff or even if Obama does worse, Bush (R)=Bad.
Re:Both, of course (Score:1, Informative)
Before 2001, you could be suspected of terrorism and still have your due process rights respected by the government. After 2001, you could not. That you have never personally been investigated for terrorism doesn't mean you haven't lost something.
Re:Both, of course (Score:4, Informative)
Um... I believe the current president is considered "in living memory". Yet, all those who screamed that Bush was taking liberties are now strangely silent. It makes me believe that those people were not worried about losing their liberties. They were simply using it as a club to beat the 'R' over the head with.
Yes, Obama is pretty bad. He voted for the patriot act and has continued the practice of warrantless wiretapping. Bush still comes out ahead because he started it. I do wish more attention was paid to how bad Obama is for civil liberties though.
And as for Bush taking liberties away... I could do everything I could do in 2001 that I could do in 2009. Exactly zero of my liberties were taken. For that matter, I don't know of anyone who lost any freedoms whatsoever under Bush.
We lost the freedom to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. We lost the right to a writ of Habeas Corpus. We lost the right not to be tortured by our own government. Any one of those is a much greater infringement of freedom than what amounts to a tax raise.
Re:Both, of course (Score:4, Informative)
Back when the tea party movement actually was grassroots (for about 2 weeks) before Dick Armey's freedomworks [freedomworks.org] and Fox News [mediamatters.org] co-opted it. This [snopes.com] is how the tea party movement got it's start.
Look. There's no excuse for violence at a non-violent protest. In any group some people are asses. I'm not faulting the tea party movement for it's fair share of idiots, I'm faulting it for the racist element it harbors above and beyond its idiot quotient. Aside from the really overt [google.com] and disguisting [wordpress.com]stuff, there's only so many times you can say "real americans" need to "take back america" from Obama who isn't eligible to be president because he's a secret Kenyan Muslim Manchurian candidate before it comes across as racially motivated.
When polling finds this: [washington.edu]
When you put it all together, it's impossible to conclude that racism isn't an important motivating factor in the tea party movement.
Re:UC Berkeley's Not Liberal (Score:3, Informative)
And the frat/sorority system isn't quite typical either. Sure there are some douchy frat boys and tanorexic sorority girls, but there are also many people who you wouldn't suspect to be in frats. I know one guy graduated to become a NASA engineer. I know a sorority girl who is working at Google next year. There are so many more examples it would be ridiculous to name them all.
And the protests? Last November there were protests against state budget cuts where a huge number of people showed up. Like maybe 5000? Not to mention the tree sitters, the hunger strikers, the unions, the riots this semester, the protesters who took over Wheeler, the popularity of the new Global Poverty minor etc etc etc.
I guess you can talk about the funding we get from corporations. The BP deal is a bit sketchy, but it's 500 million dollars, we need that money. I hardly think this makes Berkeley overwhelmingly right wing. And the whole John Yoo thing is a bit weird, and I'm not sure what should be done about that, but damn dude, UC Berkeley is amazingly liberal.