{"id":7434,"date":"2018-05-23T09:31:18","date_gmt":"2018-05-23T16:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.infosecurity.pro\/?p=7434"},"modified":"2019-04-20T16:24:10","modified_gmt":"2019-04-20T16:24:10","slug":"high-risks-in-the-new-veteran-dna-database","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.infosecurity.pro\/?p=7434","title":{"rendered":"High Risks in the new Veteran DNA Database"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<![CDATA[\n\n<p>The Veterans Affairs&nbsp;Office of Research &amp; Development has funded a national &quot;voluntary&quot; research <a href=\"https:\/\/www.research.va.gov\/mvp\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">program<\/a> called the Million Veteran Program (MVP).&nbsp; Its goal is to study how genes affect the health of those veterans who are receiving their care in the VA Healthcare System.&nbsp; MVP&#39;s goal is learn more about how genes affect health, to improve health care for veterans, and to build one of the world&#39;s largest medical databases of health information (including blood samples and DNA.)&nbsp; The Office of Research &amp; Development claims the data collected will be stored in a secure manner and coded so researches cannot directly identify the patients.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n<p>According to an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wcpo.com\/news\/health\/healthy-living\/the-va-wants-veterans-to-be-part-of-new-dna-database\">interview<\/a>&nbsp;by Channel 9 WCPO Cincinnati of VA Staff Physician and Research John Harley he explained&nbsp;&quot;The tube we have is marked with a barcode so your name isn&#39;t on that.&nbsp; You&#39;re completely protected.&quot;&nbsp; (This is hardly an explanation of the security controls required for storing private health information and redacting participant identifiable information!)&nbsp; The article also mentions researchers will study diabetes, cancer, PTSD, and other military related illnesses such as burn pit (carcinogen) exposures from tours in Iraq.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n<p>The activities expected of its veteran volunteers include filling out surveys about health and behaviors, providing a blood sample (for genomic analyses of DNA), and agreeing to future contact.&nbsp; According to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.research.va.gov\/mvp\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">program<\/a>&#39;s website outline, the risks for participants besides the blood draw itself are the distress possbilities&nbsp;while filling out the survey about family health conditions they may not have been previously aware of. (This raises major concerns for a potential new approach for the VA denial for those with service connected disabilities.)&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In addition, MVP will not give participants results of the blood tests which they claim is due to controls within the regulation&nbsp;Clinical Laboratory Improvement Ammendments (CLIA).&nbsp; (As a government funded program, typically a patient should have access to their own health records.)<\/p>\n\n\n]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<![CDATA[]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"amazonpipp_noncename":"","amazon-product-isactive":"","amazon-product-single-asin":"","amazon-product-content-location":"","amazon-product-content-hook-override":"","amazon-product-excerpt-hook-override":"","amazon-product-singular-only":"","amazon-product-amazon-desc":"","amazon-product-show-gallery":"","amazon-product-show-features":"","amazon-product-newwindow":"","amazon-product-show-list-price":"","amazon-product-show-used-price":"","amazon-product-show-saved-amt":"","amazon-product-timestamp":"","amazon-product-new-title":"","amazon-product-use-cartURL":"","amazon_featured_post_meta_key":"","_amazon_featured_alt":"","amazon-product-template":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[67,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-practices","category-vulnerabilities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infosecurity.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infosecurity.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infosecurity.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infosecurity.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infosecurity.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7434"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.infosecurity.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7822,"href":"https:\/\/www.infosecurity.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7434\/revisions\/7822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infosecurity.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infosecurity.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infosecurity.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}