Michael Usry, a young New Orleans filmmaker, has a flair for the macabre. His award-winning output includes titles like “Murderabilia,” a dark production that spotlights the trade in collectibles related to real-life killings and other violent crimes. Usry’s work can … [More]

  In 1984, a genealogy geek named John Sittner published The Source, a book meant to unearth and analyze never-before-seen records that genealogists could use to put together family histories with unprecedented detail. Several years later, he founded Ancestry magazine to teach people how… [More]

  Before they are more than a couple of days old, 98 percent of the roughly 4 million babies born in the U.S. each year have a small sample of blood taken and screened for a variety of inherited conditions. Caught early, many of these conditions can be successfully treated, preventing dea… [More]

  In 2015, genes have many uses. Soon after every baby in California is born, a hospital worker extracts and logs its genetic information. It will be tested for diseases and then stashed permanently in a warehouse containing a generation of Californians’ DNA. For those charged with a… [More]

  Detectives in the UK are expecting thousands of men to take part in mass DNA screening in the hope of solving the murder of grandmother Valerie Graves. Men aged 17 and over began attending the voluntary sessions at the Millstream hotel in Bosham, West Sussex, at 9am on Wednesday, more tha… [More]

  The recent hackings of millions of consumers’ personal information from health insurer Anthem and hospital group Community Health Systems highlight the need to maintain the privacy of individuals’ health records. So it is welcome news that Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Glendale, ha… [More]

  Say this for the Vermont Legislature: Sometimes it just won’t take “no” for an answer, even when it should know better. In 2009, the Legislature passed a law extending the requirement to provide DNA samples from only those convicted of felonies to those merely charged wi… [More]

  Privacy advocates are calling for more safeguards related to a state collection of DNA samples from 16 million Californians in a nondescript government warehouse in the Bay Area. The biobank holds blood taken with the prick of a heel from almost every baby born in California for the last … [More]

  A coalition of geneticists and computer programmers calling itself the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health is developing protocols for exchanging DNA information across the Internet. The researchers hope their work could be as important to medical science as HTTP, the protocol created … [More]

  Britain is to share its DNA data with European police forces next year in a move that threatens to reignite concerns of eurosceptics over EU justice and policing measures. The compromise agreement brokered in Brussels covers a European data co-operation scheme that Britain … [More]