More News

Along with the bills covering genetic discrimination, Del. Roger Manno and Sen. Jennie M. Forehand are asking lawmakers to spell out who owns a person's DNA.

Intellectual property experts, Manno said, believe genetic information is private property.

"Just like a trademark or an idea is private property, there will be a day when we're cloning arms and humans, and that's my arm and that's my DNA," Manno said.

Forehand, who helped to pass Maryland's law banning genetic discrimination in the 1990s, said the legislation is needed.

"If this passes it will elevate the importance and significance of the genetic privacy," she said. "It sounds like, ‘Why would you need that?' We've talked to some people in the law school, and I asked, ‘Are people going to laugh me out of the room?' The answer was clearly no, this needs to be discussed in the legal sense."

A short House Judiciary Committee hearing on the bill was Wednesday. The Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee is taking up the bill Feb. 10.