Massachusetts voters may never know the true genetic heritage of Sen. Elizabeth Warren,D-Mass., but they can be very clear on what the law says about performing DNA testing without written consent.
That’s bad news for aspiring conservative super-sleuths, and Howie Carr in particular, who doubt that Warren really is of Native American ancestry. Six years ago, that Boston radio host tried learning Warren’s genetic makeup from a DNA sample he took from the cap of a pen Warren chewed during a book signing.
“Alas, there wasn’t enough saliva on it,” Carr wrote in a recent Boston Herald op-ed. Also alas, Carr may have broken the law. Title XVI, Chapter 111, Section 70G of the general laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts frowns on such DNA stings:
While exceptions are made for clinical research, Massachusetts doesn’t make allowances for genetic truther trolls eager to catch Warren in an obvious lie. And why should it? The senator has already embarrassed herself. Sans evidence of her ancestry, she submitted recipes to the Pow-Wow-Chow cookbook, claimed Native American heritage on her Harvard Law School job application, and even fundraised off of being nicknamed “Pocahontas” by the president.
But Warren is free to make those claims, and Warren has reason to feel secure in her secret genetic makeup. It is almost impossible, explains Gabriel Cheong founding partner of the Boston-based Infinity Law Group, to get a court order to test DNA on a political basis.
“The only time we really come across genetic marker testing, is when we are trying to prove paternity,” Cheong tells me over the phone. “And we have to get a court order because of the general laws [of Massachusetts]. Your genetics are private to you. Someone can’t just take your genes and test them without your consent because it’s your body. It’s your privacy rights.”
Sneaking DNA isn’t exactly easy either. On television, pretend CSI investigators make it seem like a test can be run from an old coffee cup. In reality, accurate results require a larger sample, usually a cotton swab to the inside of the cheek. There wouldn’t be enough DNA on a coffee cup, Cheong tells me, let alone a pen cap.
That doesn’t make taking a sample impossible though. Skip the coffee cup and go for the scalp, one private investigator tells me over the phone in a thick Boston accent. A single hair follicle is enough to run a genetic test. Plus, it isn’t as easily contaminated as a saliva sample. Plucking a hair “would be fairly easy to do,” the PI says. “But then of course that’d be assault and battery.”
