PROFESSOR MAKHLOUF’S ARTICLE ON DNA SURVEILLANCE OF IMMIGRANTS FEATURED IN HEALTHLAWPROF BLOG

American Journal of Law & MedicineSeptember 2020 — Professor Makhlouf’s article, The Ethics of DNA Testing at the Border, was recently published in the American Journal of Law & Medicine, the country’s leading health law journal, and featured in HealthLawProf Blog. The articles provides an overview of how DNA testing has been used in the U.S. immigration context and traces the expansion of DNA surveillance over the past two years. It describes the privacy risks of expanding DNA surveillance of immigrants—including unique risks that noncitizens face compared with citizens—and analyzes its bioethical and immigration policy implications. The Article concludes with “a call for action to advocates, policymakers, and scholars with expertise in genetic privacy, bioethics, or immigration” to ensure that any expansion of DNA surveillance of immigrants is careful, deliberative, and measured.

This Article’s subject is particularly timely, given the Trump administration’s recent proposals to expand DNA collection of immigrants as well as the citizens who sponsor them. Professor Makhlouf’s bioethics and immigration policy analyses are thus relevant to not only immigrants, but also the U.S. citizens who employ them or call them family.


Professor Medha D. Makhlouf is an Assistant Professor and Founding Director of the Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic at Penn State Dickinson Law. She has a joint appointment in the Department of Public Health Sciences at Penn State College of Medicine. Professor Makhlouf’s research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of health law, immigrants’ rights, and poverty law and policy. Her recent scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in the New York University Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review Online, and the American Journal of Law and Medicine. Professor Makhlouf’s work is available at https://works.bepress.com/medha-makhlouf/.