Policies for Handling Residual Newborn Blood Samples for Human Health Research

Newborn screening prevents thousands of premature ill-nesses and deaths every year and is one of the most suc-cessful public health programs in theUS. Lately, there has been considerable controversy regarding the retention and use of residual newborn blood samples after their initial use in screening without obtaining parental in-formed consent. The concerns have focused on the con-fidentiality, privacy, and autonomy rights of parents to decide whether to permit the secondary use of these sam-ples for research. This ongoing controversy regarding the preservation and use of dried blood samples in research has led to the destruction of severalmillion archived sam-ples and potentially more in the near future if no further actions are taken. Left out of the discussion, however, have been the benefits of making the residual blood sam