California Legislators' Effort to Prevent Student DNA Testing Could Come Too Late
State legislators have lined up a bill aimed at preventing the University of California, Berkeley, from executing a controversial program that asks new students to participate in genetic testing as part of a fall semester orientation program . But even if the bill becomes law, it will likely be too late to halt DNA collection because campus officials began mailing saliva sampling kits to about 5,500 incoming freshmen and transfer students this week and the bill cannot come up for a vote before August 2. Berkeley's fall semester begins on August 19, with welcome activities from August 23 to 27. Jasper Rine, the Berkeley biologist heading the genetic testing project, has scheduled an on-campus public lecture for September 13 to discuss the aggregated results of students' tests. [More] University of...