DETROIT (AP) – The state of Michigan has agreed to destroy more than 3 million dried blood spots taken from babies and kept in storage, a partial settlement in an ongoing lawsuit over consent and privacy in the digital age.
At the state’s direction, hospitals have routinely pricked the heels of newborns to draw blood to check for more than 50 rare diseases. That practice, which is widespread across the U.S., isn’t being challenged. Rather, the dispute is over leftover samples.
A blood spot from each child is stored in Lansing while five more are sent to the Michigan Neonatal Biobank in Detroit for safekeeping under climate-controlled conditions.
Scientists can pay a fee to use the Detroit-stored samples for various research projects. Research with newborn blood spots occurs in other states, too, especially California, New York and Minnesota where they can be kept for decades.
Texas in 2009 agreed to destroy millions of spots to settle a lawsuit over privacy.