If knowledge is power, knowing the intimate secrets of a person’s DNA could be a powerful weapon. That might explain why world leaders who hastened to Moscow in the past few days for diplomatic talks seemed to balk at Russian-administered COVID-19 tests.
This might be a case where imagination is getting a bit ahead of what science is actually capable of.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz refused to let Russia conduct a polymerase chain reaction (PCR), while French officials said that President Emmanuel Macron balked at some of the requirements to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, leading to speculation that he did not want the Russian swab either.
Neither leader is known for opposition to COVID-19 countermeasures, so speculation arose that they were trying to keep genetic material out of Russia’s hands.
In the high-stakes world of national security and international espionage, global powers are always looking for an edge, and increasingly those new fronts are less tangible than the battlefield.
So gene science might one day be a useful addition to the arsenal, intelligence experts say, but scientists say that day might still be a long way away.
The leaders have not actually accused Russia of trying to use their DNA for nefarious means, but that has not stopped the rampant speculation.
French officials bristled at questions and dismissed any idea that the Russians were trying to secretly obtain Macron’s DNA.
A French official said that Russia’s conditions for Macron to get close to Putin were “not acceptable” and “not compatible” with the French president’s agenda. Hence the absurdly long marble table that Macron and Scholz shared with the Russian president and which spawned many memes.
German government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit said that he was “reluctant” to comment after the Macron stir.
Nevertheless, he told reporters in Berlin that Scholz followed the same procedure Germany applies to foreign dignitaries: They can submit their own PCR tests and, if there is any doubt, a doctor can come on board the plane to observe the testing.
“The Russian side saw it differently, and said: ‘If there’s a test, it needs to be a Russian one,’ and the chancellor decided he wouldn’t be available for that,” Hebestreit said, adding: “But I wouldn’t interpret too much into that.”
France and Germany have reason to mistrust Russia.
The countries are members of NATO, which also includes the UK and the US. NATO was formed during the Cold War by Western allies as a bulwark against the Soviet Union.
Russia has expressed concern that NATO is using Ukraine as a pawn to undermine Russia and has cited that as the reason for its military buildup along Ukraine’s borders.
DNA is inside every cell in the body and could be extracted from multiple methods — such as a nasal swab — even though a COVID-19 test swab is after different genetic material: RNA from the virus.
“Those samples have tons of human DNA,” University of Minnesota Genomics Center director Kenny Beckman said. “You could definitely take that sample, extract the DNA and do whatever kind of full workup you’d want to do on that person.”
DNA has the instructions that a human needs to survive and grow. Every person’s DNA is unique. It can be used to find where their ancestors might have come from, whether they have any unknown relatives floating in the ether, and also whether they have certain genetic diseases or genetic abnormalities associated with diseases or medical conditions.
In forensic science, DNA can be used to physically connect someone to a piece of evidence or eliminate someone as a suspect in a crime.
“You can use DNA to identify disease risk, so [the world leaders] might be at risk for a disease,” said Howard McLeod, a genetics expert and director of precision medicine at the Florida-based Geriatric Oncology Consortium. “You could look and see if there could be some ancestry elements that could be exploited.”
In general, the idea of learning more about someone like a world leader through DNA probably “seems a lot more scary than it is in reality,” he said.
Beckman said that it seemed “farfetched” to think that the information gathered could be politically damaging.
“What are you going to do, say that Macron has a slightly higher risk of blood pressure?” Beckman said. “But then I don’t spend a lot of time trying to dream up ways to weaponize someone’s genetic information.”
George Annas, a bioethicist who has written extensively about the importance of genetic privacy, wants to make one thing clear.
“DNA is not magic. It’ll give you some information, but it’s not going to tell you how you can assassinate somebody,” he said.
Even without the capability to build an individually targeted bioweapon, the power of suggestion can be enough to compromise world leaders, and Russia has been known to employ kompromat — blackmailing someone by threatening to release embarrassing information about them.
Why cannot Putin and his guest just wear masks?
Putin has largely eschewed masks throughout the pandemic, but is otherwise hypervigilant about COVID-19 measures. The 69-year-old appeared to work mostly remotely and was rarely seen in public before he was fully vaccinated with Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, which still has not been approved by the EU.
When dignitaries visit US President Joe Biden, they are required to be tested, an official said.
The White House makes itself available as a testing option, but most leaders arrange for their own, which the White House is fine with.
When Biden is tested at home and abroad, samples are taken and processed exclusively by the White House Medical Unit.
The US government has allegedly dabbled in collecting the DNA of foreign leaders.
Diplomatic cables from the administration of former US president Barack Obama, revealed by WikiLeaks, instructed US diplomats in select African countries to collect “fingerprints, facial images, DNA and iris scans” from “key and emerging” officials, including religious and business leaders.
Normal people should not be deterred from being tested for COVID-19.
In the US, federal law bars medical providers and laboratories from using patient samples for any purpose other than the original test administered.
In certain cases, people can consent to make their results available for research, as with health and ancestry services such as 23andMe. Use caution with those services; even if tests comply with US law, data can still end up in the hands of another country.
Annas said that the right to privacy is paramount, no matter who the person is.
“Even presidents have the right to medical privacy, and they should not have their information disclosed to the public without their consent,” he said.
The consensus is that the most a bad actor could do with a world leader’s DNA is generate scandal — not a presidential clone.
Still, you never know where your DNA might end up: A few years ago, an anonymous group calling themselves the Earnest Project claimed to have grabbed DNA from a bunch of world leaders who attended the Davos summit.
The group said that they would put the samples up for auction as a statement about the perils of surveillance capitalism, but the auction was delayed because of legal concerns and seemingly never rescheduled.
The group did not respond to a request for comment made through its Web site.
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