The privacy concerns form the bulk of the negative impact of DNA fingerprinting on United Kingdom society, and they are not at all unfounded. Several schools have implemented locks and record keeping mechanisms that depend upon a child's fingerprints (traditional, not DNA) (Edinformatics). These fingerprint mechanisms are used to track money for school meals, to replace library cards, and to alow access to school buildings and rooms in an attempt to cut down on the rate of skipping school -- and the British government is allowed to collect and maintain fingerprint records without parental consent (Edinformatics). There are serious concerns that the relatively new technology of DNA fingerprinting might also be implemented along the same lines, without the right of citizens to deny consent, leading to a DNA database that includes every child who attends school in the United Kingdom.

There are also many positive impacts that the technology has...
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