OPINION:
The government doesn’t just want your taxes, obedience and votes. Now they want your blood.
New Jersey parents just learned hospital staffers were taking their babies’ blood at birth, and keeping the samples — not just for testing of diseases but for a variety of other unseemly reasons — and that they were doing this at the demand of the state’s Department of Health.
The nonprofit Institute of Justice has teamed with a bunch of parents to sue.
Testing babies’ blood for diseases isn’t odd.
But keeping the samples for 23 years — as New Jersey does — without the knowledge or consent of the mother or parents — as happens in New Jersey — and then using that blood however the state wants and wishes — as is the practice in New Jersey — is more than odd. It’s chilling.
“Once the state has the blood,” IJ.org writes, “it can use it however it wishes, including selling it to third parties, giving it to police without a warrant, or even selling it to the Pentagon to create a registry — as previously happened in Texas.”
Move over gun registry. A blood registry would be the ultimate in government control.
Think of the power George Soros’ district attorneys could wield with blood samples. There goes the last of MAGA.
The other states that take newborns’ blood for screening generally destroy the samples or allow parents to choose if the state can keep them. But not New Jersey.
“What makes New Jersey’s program so uniquely disturbing is the complete lack of safeguards for future abuse and the lack of consent, which leave the program ripe for abuse,” said Institute for Justice attorney Christie Herbert, in a written statement on the organization’s website. “Parents should not have to worry if the state is going to use the blood it said it was taking from their baby to test for diseases for other, unrelated purposes.”
Blood goes to the highest bidder?
Cash-strapped states may be drawn to the idea of selling the samples to Big Pharma, to labs conducting who-knows-what kind of experiments, to interests and sources that could ultimately serve as buyers for China. It’s not even the first-person sales that are the most worrisome. It’s the buyers who then go on to sell to someone else. Literally, American babies’ blood could end up in the hands of police, political enemies of the state, the deep state.
Oh, this is America — that wouldn’t happen?
Oh, this is the Health Department — they wouldn’t do anything nefarious?
Texas, Minnesota and Michigan were all sued because they took babies’ blood and kept it without the consent of parents — without the knowledge of parents. The states lost and in the case of Texas, it was forced to destroy 5.3 million blood samples and agree, going forward, to destroy blood taken from babies after two years. Minnesota and Michigan had to destroy 1.1 million and 3 million blood samples, respectively; in the case of Michigan, the lawsuit is still ongoing.
Again: chilling. George Orwell’s “1984,” anyone?
In this day and age of data collection, where ZIP codes, telephone numbers and birthdates are regularly scarfed and mined for marketing and technological developments — think of the value blood could bring.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
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