In general, most people worldwide would agree that one’s body is one’s personal property. Despite the fact that each culture has their own definition of personal space, it is generally universally known that a person’s body is owned by no one but that specific person.
The question being asked by scientists as of late is whether or not one’s DNA is personal property, or if it is accessible to all, in a finder’s keeper’s kind of fashion. Human beings essentially leave tons of DNA behind every day, and most people would pin this as trash. For example, hair is a DNA carrier, and the average human loses 100 hairs per day, so most people are leaving hundreds of DNA strands behind just by losing hair. DNA is indeed a very personal and unique part of the human body, yet people don’t tend to be upset if someone takes a loose hair off their shirt.
This shift in views is largely based on the advances in DNA technology. Now, someone could fundamentally take the trails of DNA that we leave behind, and genetically manipulate it to produce their desired results. For example, a terrorist could take an important politician’s DNA, and plant it in order to fake that the politician is having an affair, or that the politician committed a crime. The possibilities for these kinds of manipulations are endless, and they could permanently alter the image portrayed by politicians, celebrities, and other important public figures.
I think that DNA is a very important molecule, and that each person’s DNA is their own personal property. I do not believe that governments, or anyone for that matter, should have the right to manipulate or use a person’s DNA without their consent, or use it in any sort of experimentation at all. In order to make sure this doesn’t happen, courts need to find a way to include DNA in the fourth amendment, in order to be able to legally protect a person’s DNA. It may not seem like anything scary or worth worrying about now, but at the rate that science is advancing, DNA sequencing and testing could evolve into an extremely dangerous practice where the victim’s DNA could be used to create children, without the victim’s consent, and many more ‘genetic crimes’ could be invented and performed.
At the same time, I don’t think people should be crazy worried about their DNA being stolen. I don’t think we need to be retracing our steps every day in search of loose hairs, nail clippings, or any little skin cells we could have left behind just to protect the ownership of our own DNA. People simply need to be aware that there is one day a possibility of our DNA being stolen and manipulated. The important thing would be for court’s to begin planning ahead, and make stealing DNA a crime, even if the victim merely left it behind on accident, as we do every day.
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