US lawmaker voices DNA biowarfare fears
A US House Intelligence Committee member has warned Americans against using DNA testing kits, saying it could be sold and used to develop bioweapons specifically tailored to target certain groups or even individuals.
“There are now weapons under development, and developed, that are designed to target specific people,” US Representative Jason Crow (D-Colorado), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said in Colorado this weekend, RT reported on Monday.
“That’s what this is, where you can actually take someone’s DNA, take their medical profile, and you can target a biological weapon that will kill that person or take them off the battlefield or make them inoperable,” he added.
Crow expressed concerns that expectations of privacy for personal data have lessened over the past two decades, to the point that young individuals have “very little expectation of privacy” and readily give their data to private companies, such as DNA testing services.
“People will very rapidly spit into a cup and send it to 23andMe and get really interesting data about their background,” Crow said. “And guess what? Their DNA is now owned by a private company. It can be sold off with very little intellectual property protection or privacy protection.”
The lawmaker said that the United States should create new guidelines for protection of personal health data, including DNA, “because that data is actually going to be procured and collected by our adversaries for the development of these systems.”
Russian officials have long voiced these concerns. Moscow has been warning about the dangers of the uncontrolled gathering of DNA samples for years.
Russian President Vladimir Putin way back in 2017, quoting Russian intelligence services, said biological samples were being harvested “purposefully and professionally” all over Russia by various NGOs and other organizations for unclear purposes.
Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Force, has said that over the past years, the Pentagon has “significantly expanded its research potential not only in the field of creating biological weapons, but also obtaining information about antibiotic resistance and the presence of antibodies to certain diseases in populations of specific regions.”
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