In Texas, the state gave blood spots to the federal government to help build a DNA database to crack cold cases and identify missing persons. Michigan also uses the spots for biomedical research, has sold them to for-profit companies for research, and uses them in crime victim identification, Ellison said. “And the government does not get to interfere with your right to be able to dictate what happens to your self.”īut many states violate those rights, Ellison said, because screening for disease is just the first way they use babies’ dried blood. “You have a constitutional right to keep the government out of your body and out of the information that’s in your body,” Ellison said. To Ellison, the testing and storing of newborn blood spots violate two constitutional rights - a person’s rights to privacy and bodily autonomy. “But sure enough, here we are.” Philip Ellison sued Michigan to end its practice of storing blood samples from infants taken after birth. “If you would have told me when I started law school almost 15 years ago that I’d be up to my knees in infant blood, I would probably have thought you were crazy,” he told the New Jersey Monitor. His cases remain pending in state and federal courts and will likely influence new challenges that have arisen in other states, including New Jersey, where the New Jersey Monitor and the Office of the Public Defender have sued to force the state to reveal details of how its newborn blood spots are used. He sued in Michigan, both to have his son’s samples destroyed and to require state and health authorities to educate new parents about the work, obtain informed consent, and create more oversight and transparency around blood spots. Hospitals in every state routinely prick newborns’ heels to draw blood to screen for diseases, retaining dried samples - or spots - for storage for varying lengths of time.Įllison doesn’t object to the health screenings, but rather the common practice of storing spots - sometimes forever - for use in medical research, criminal investigations, and all sorts of things parents never consented to. So started a five-year crusade by the Michigan attorney, who has become the leading champion nationally for parental rights in a battle over “blood spots.” “So the civil rights lawyer in me took over and said, ‘What the hell are you talking about?!’” This is the blood we ship to the state of Michigan,’” Ellison said. “I said, ‘You’re already testing his blood.’ And they said, ‘Well, no, no, no, this isn’t the blood for us. Attorney Philip Ellison’s mission to stop a practice he has characterized as the government preying on new parents began just hours after his son entered the world in the fall of 2017.Īs nurses did various routine health checks on the newborn, one approached Ellison with a form, demanding a signature for blood testing.
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