Blood tests are now, so accurate & intrusive, you might as well tell your employer & their insurance company the story of your life. Not only to them but to other agencies with which they might share this information & use it against you. Plus, you are telling them the story of your whole family & any diseases to which they & therefore you may be genetically predisposed. An example of why insurance companies want you to have a yearly blood test for your insurance is to know if you are at risk for genetic & familial diseases which are reoccurent in your chromosomes. It's not to protect you, it's to drop you if you are at risk, or raise your employer's insurance rates on you, so that they are more apt to get rid of you. They wouldn't dare ask you what your sexual preferences are outright, or if you have ever had an STD; nor would they have the audacity to ask what your Political pursuasion or Religious beliefs are. But they could extract over 200 pieces of information from blood analysis even before they cracked the Genome Code of Life. As far as I know they send this information to a Central Data Laboratory in St. Louis where they analyze & store the info, which of course is now circulating in Databanks throughout the world. If you are a large company, fearing data loss, you have a backup system across the Pond somewhere. That's another at risk factor for your data which they ignore, minimize or don't care about. If there is a hostile government takeover in one of these places, your information is at their disposal. And through cracking the genetic code that probability of human pre-assessment will eventually reach into your future, blocking you from holding certain occupations, as the occupational hazards are those which you are harboring through your individual genetic predisposition. So the sky's the limit as far as how little privacy you will actually have. If you think you are immune because you are a good person, you are wrong my friend. They are just gathering & garnering the grain so they can separate the wheat from the chaff, winners from losers, survivors from quitters, and risks from non-risks. They'll get to everyone with a number & barcode eventually. We might as well be shrink-wrapped & sold if this intrusion of blood-testing by insurance carriers continues on into the genetic code era. This is what the Nazis were all about, creating a super-race which did not have the weaknesses of the supposed inferior races or peoples. Hitler was very into this. They were breeding humans during his time. His Arian Nation theory was what drove him to take over Europe & he wouldn't have stopped there. The only people who would not have been exterminated would have been tall blondes with blue eyes. Unfortunately the Furor was not one of those & I'm surprised nobody noticed sooner. There is no reason to tolerate Blood Testing by Employers; The Insurance Giants; or grant Government access to your Genetic Code!
Pass the Buck, Gov! - Occupational hazards are those which you are harboring! This Means: It's all your fault for taking drugs, having the parents you did & whatever it is that we happen to find out while we're sifting through your human database called DNA. Oh, sorry do we look nosey? Or are we JUST PROTECTING (ahem) protecting your rights citizens!!! This translates in DoubleSpeak into: "We're in bed with the insurance companies & don't want to take liability for anything! The only way we can do that is to make a case that YOU are liable!"
Why have an annual test? If my chromosomes point to a genetic disease (or show it clear), that won't change in one, two or 30 years.
I found out since that the yearly blood test this person took was optional as it has been by most company insurers. But having submitted himself voluntarily to the testing, in hopes to find out if there were any deeper problems causing symptoms (which he was hoping to take advantage of by this free testing) the doctor refused to discuss any medical diagnosis with him. Now, whether he can extract that information from the insurance company is at issue. I just think it's very strange in every way possible & if this is a typical practice then there's "Something rotten in Denmark," as Shakespeare wrote. I suppose it would be considered a potential for discrimination if tests were mandatory in the private sector. A single blood test can be either optional or mandatory for applications for certain jobs, but are definitely mandatory for Military posts & perhaps top-secret security clearances. Did you see the movie, "Gattica?" In view of the Global & Political nature of the Olympic Games, does the future hold for testing of career athletes after the recent steroid exposé? That sort of disappeared, didn't it? What about the Olympian who ran in the female competition category who was recently discovered to be a male? He said he was born with genitalia of a man but a witchdoctor put a curse on his parents for unpaid bills pertaining to his birth, I think, and so he said he was made to live as a woman. I think that sounds like a primitive insanity plea, but who know? There were a lot of reasons to suspect such activities amongst the former Soviet Union's athletes & DNA would be the only way to determine the sex of a professional athlete which operations can mask. Can't say for a fact that they are coughing up the bucks to test the applicant for Walmart's DNA, but eventually, why not if the lid is off? "After us, The Deluge!" Drug tests used to be cost prohibitive, but now are available at the pharmacy for $20! It's a Brave New World. I suppose what the Job is & Who wants to know are the criteria. As far as repeat testing, it would be more logical that they would test your blood alone for prohibited substances yearly or bacterial or viral activities that could lead to disease than the more cost-prohibitive DNA testing. Amnesty & anti-death penalty advocates are crying out for mandatory DNA testing for all who are on Death Row, so why not map all criminals, especially felons eventually if they now post the addresses of child molesters on the Internet? In some cases the whole neighborhood gets together & asks them to move or contributes to buy their house from them so they will move. (Isn't there a potential for abuse lingering there?) Social Trial-and-Error Methods suck... True, your genetic makeup doesn't change. But genetic mutations do take place over time, for instance if someone develops cancer. But they would detect that presence in the Cells under a microscope or by other means. Lastly, Science has only entered this frontier. If they do test your genetic blueprint, they may only need to go back & look at the "X-rays" so to speak. Or they may develop new tests, more thorough tests, or better tests or quicker or more inexpensive (for whom?) I don't know. It's like Pandora's Box, once somebody opened it, everything was released. I don't know what the future holds but I know Who holds the future.
The Government could not exist without us, the People. They are supposed to be serving us, not serving us for dinner. Our taxes pay their salary. But they act so pompous. They not only want our money, but our blood & every freaking thing they can find out about us. There's no end to how much they can find out about you when they have a DNA/Blood sample, which will means it is on file for good as they invent new tests & cross reference different genetic suspects as they are determined. I would say, NO to any blood test. Why do they revel in all the extra information they are able to record? So they have a fucking computer! So do all the rest of us! The problem is when those so-called security measures are compromised, like recently happened with a half million peoples' credit histories in California. There was more than one breach close together, so I don't have the facts. But aren't you glad we're in such good hands? Maybe it's best to ruin your credit & just go off the grid. It would drive them mad!
Hm, I suppose I'm the only one to see any good from such extensive and revealing blood tests? I can see how knowing all that would be a good thing, and as long as they don't refuse to insure you, I don't see how its bad thing for insurance companies to have that information. They ask you about your family history anyway, and for people like my mom, who is unaware of her father, and any health problems on that family side, this could help warn her of diabetes and strokes and such. Feel free to tear apart my reasoning now.