Public Health

Brickbat: What Could Go Wrong?

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England's National Health Service will begin a 10-year program to sequence every newborn's DNA using umbilical-cord blood. Supporters say the program will identify risks for hundreds of genetic diseases—far beyond the nine conditions currently screened via the heel-prick test—which Health Secretary Wes Streeting says will shift healthcare from reacting to illness, to predicting and preventing it early. But critics say there aren't sufficient safeguards for privacy.