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Now, personally I don't see this as being such a big deal. I orignally read the story on Slashdot which, of course, had a lot of comments regarding invasion of privacy and loss of rights and such. One person even compared it to the US PATRIOT act, which I think is ridiculous. The US PATRIOT act is an afront to American freedom, and the writers and supporters of the bill, IMHO, should be tried for treason.
At any rate, a national or global DNA database has so many benefits that it easily outweighs and realistically possible abuses.
a) Use in solving crimes (including pre-existing crimes) could be amazing. Fingerprints slightly change over years, and can be removed (acid) or hidden (gloves). DNA, currently, cannot be changed (except by extreme medical conditions such as Chimerae Syndrome and even then it isn't really changing, per se).
b) This is much different than fingerprints, is not really much more abusable, and is far more sophisticated and accurate.
c) One person on /. mentioned that a national DNA database could be used psuedo-anonymously be researchers and if something was noticed, like a high risk of alzheimers, the DNA owner could be notified in an automated fashion (thus psuedo-anon) about the condition so as not to be blindsided.
d) Also mentioned on /. that insurance companies, as long as they were not legally allowed to discriminate against potentially less healthy people, could hedge their money correctly, and possibly lower health care costs while also still turning a damned good profit. If used properly, this could be good for us all.
e) Extensive genetics research could be done if non-specific donor information was stored with the sampling. Race, age, origin, parents DNA (for heredity) and such on a large scale like that could help genetics really launch forward.
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