Intelligence Committee Members issue Warning about Possible Threat to Americans’ DNA

A Democrat from the House Intelligence Committee warned Americans not to use DNA testing services as their data may be used to make bioweapons that target individuals and groups.

“You can’t have a discussion about this without talking about privacy and the protection of commercial data because expectations of privacy have degraded over the last 20 years,” Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said during a panel discussion in Colorado. According to polling, young people have little expectation of privacy. This is what the data and survey show .”

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“People will very rapidly spit into a cup and send it to 23andMe and get really interesting data about their background,” he added, making reference to a popular DNA testing and ancestry service.

But governments can “actually take someone’s DNA … you know, 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,” Crow added, saying that companies such as 23andMe can sell a person’s DNA.

” And guess what? They now own their DNA. They can sell it off with very little intellectual and privacy protection, and we don’t have any legal and regulatory frameworks to deal with this,” he said with Sen. Joni (R-Iowa), at Friday’s Aspen Security Forum.

Officials must have a public discussion about protecting DNA, health information and other data. Such data could “be procured or collected by our enemies for the development of such systems,” the congressman said, in reference to biological weapons.

The company has previously refused to sell private information of customers, such as DNA. The Epoch Times has contacted 23andMe for comment.

China and Russia Collecting American Genetic DNA

About a year ago, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) issued a warning that Chinese and Russian laboratories were processing the DNA tests of Americans via Medicare and Medicaid.

A technician works in a lab specializing in DNA in Beijing on Aug. 22, 2018. (Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images)

“It is ridiculous that our current policies enable the Chinese Communist Party to access Americans’ genomic data,” he said in a statement in July 2021. There is no reason why Beijing should have access to the genome data of American citizens , as it routinely attempts to undercut US national security.

Last year, some federal intelligence officials said in a report that they believe COVID-19 likely emerged from a high-security laboratory in Wuhan, China, in late 2019. The National Institutes of Health is under scrutiny for funding it gave to a third party to allegedly conduct controversial gain-of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology on bat coronaviruses.

Ernst stated that the U.S. could open up new fronts against them by attacking food supplies at large scales with biological weapons.

” If we think about food security, what can our enemies do with biological weapons directed at animal agriculture and our agricultural sector…highly pathogenic avian flu, African swine disease,” she stated. All of these items circulated all over the world, but we also know that if an enemy targets them, it causes food insecurity. Other insecurities are caused by food insecurity around the world .”

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