UC Berkeley Asking Incoming Students For DNA
May 19th, 2010Oh sure.
Via: KTVU:
UC Berkeley is adding something a little different this year in its welcome package — cotton swabs for a DNA sample.
In the past, incoming freshman and transfer students have received a rather typical welcome book from the College of Letters and Science’s “On the Same Page” program, but this year the students will be asked for more.
The students will be asked to voluntarily submit a DNA sample. The cotton swabs will come with two bar code labels. One label will be put on the DNA sample and the other is kept for the students own records.
The confidential process is being overseen by Jasper Rine, a campus professor of Genetics and Development Biology, who says the test results will help students make decisions about their diet and lifestyle.
Once the DNA sample is sent in and tested, it will show the student’s ability to tolerate alcohol, absorb folic acid and metabolize lactose.
The results of the test will be put in a secure online database where students will be able to retrieve their results by using their bar code.
Rine hopes that this will excite students to be more hands-on with their college experience.
I can’t resist filling in some background on Rine. He is a sort of type A personality who became famous for blocking the tenure of Prof. Ignacio Chapela in the plant sciences department. Chapela had worked at Novartis, but had published a paper in Nature about the scale of spread of GM corn pollen in Mexico where traditional corn is grown. Rine has ownership in a biotech company that does maize applied genetics. Rine’s colleagues recommended tenure. Rine is an excellent undergraduate instructor and I sat in a few of his classes. He gets groups of 200 talking and interacting, and brings in a pile of recommended books to lectures, makes students talk about int’l news events, and he generally has renaissance types of skills. He decided to hold an outdoor teach in regarding his situation on recommendation of friends, and he also holds outside small community classes and walks. UCB gave him tenure quietly after the end of a semester.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2004/12/09/17090001.php
http://www.karaplatoni.com/stories/kernelsoftruth.html
http://www.dailycal.org/article/11419/colleagues_fear_professor_s_research_may_adversely
http://www.mindfully.org/GE/2004/Biotech-Critic-Chapela8mar04.htm
Rine had a video that went viral when a student at his Bio1A class stole his laptop and he gave a short threatening speech about federal marshalls going after the student, and people debated whether that is possible. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55–XbQFgWo
Oh, THAT asshole… So, a grade A tool for the frankenpHood industrial complex wants to collect thousands of human genetic samples… Sounds like an appropriate theme for a horror movie, or dystopic videogame.
oops. Above I meant to write “Chapela is an excellent undergraduate instructor”. I only saw the first day of one of Rine’s classes, and he was okay, but I didn’t take it or form an impression. I don’t know why he’d be trying to drum up interest in the department among freshmen. It’s popular, with something like 800 cell biology majors. Maybe some students can stop drinking milk