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This week, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) uploaded a slightly modified draft of the Human DNA Profiling Bill on its website, opening up the controversial Bill, now tabled in Parliament, for public scrutiny.

Legal researcher Usha Ramanathan, a member of the Committee formed by the Centre in 2013 to review this Bill, spoke to The Hindu about the modified draft Bill which continues to raise several critical concerns relating to privacy, ethical usage of DNA samples and uses of the proposed DNA database. In February this year, she wrote a dissent note to the DBT highlighting the Bill’s controversial provisions, but her concerns remain unaddressed.

“Like the Unique Identification (UID) project in which the government collected biometric samples of citizens to create a general database, marketing it as ‘Aadhaar’ or the basis for citizens to seek entitlements, the DNA database too aims to collect citizen DNA samples and make a database out of it. In UID, biometric data samples were collected from willing or coerced citizens, but there was no way people could opt out of the database...