Greek Newborns’ DNA Sold Without Consent
Dear Member,
This is our weekly round-up from Greece.
The Greek Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis signed a secretive agreement with two private companies—RealGenix and Beginnings—for the whole genome sequencing of 100,000 newborns by 2029, which was disclosed on Friday. The deal was struck without public debate, scientific consensus, or approval from national bioethics bodies or relevant state authorities. It also lacks specific safeguards as to personal data and parents’ consent.
Renowned scientists deconstructed the claim that silicon oils caused the fireball following the Tempi train collision with specific arguments. This happened during a Press Conference by the Tempi Victims’ Families’ Association.
The ‘devilish’ paragraph from the EODASAAM report was back in place. What on earth has happened with this report?
Greece’s genetic future at the hands of private companies
Reporters United and Efsyn disclosed on Friday a secretive agreement signed by the Greek Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis with two private companies—RealGenix and Beginnings—for the whole genome sequencing of 100,000 newborns by 2029 (The reports in Greek here (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) and here (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)).
The hidden deal marks a drastic shift from the state-run biochemical screening performed by the Institute of Child Health (ICH) since 1974. According to the agreement, the research findings from the genetic data collected will be “exclusive property” of RealGenix, a Greek shell company linked to the U.S.-based PlumcareRWE, raising serious privacy and sovereignty concerns.
The deal was struck without public debate, scientific consensus, or approval from national bioethics bodies or relevant state authorities. In a unanimous decision, the ICH Scientific Council strongly opposed this agreement, citing unresolved ethical, legal, and scientific issues. Despite this, Adonis Georgiadis fully endorsed the program internationally and promoted newborn genomic screening, claiming governmental support.
The programmatic agreement was not found at the state’s transparency register Diavgeia. It even includes a confidentiality clause, ensuring that the public will never find out what was included in the deal.
While advancing genetic neonatal diagnostics is not inherently problematic, as this scientific method could lead to medical breakthroughs, its opaque, ethically questionable, and privatised execution makes this case alarming.
⧫ Our member Mads Henrik Højgaard has contributed to this section.
Tempi “Only the parents in Palestine can truly understand us”
“The result of Mr. Triantopoulos’ actions is those green plastic bags in which we received our children. I have twice requested the exhumation of my child and have been denied — to me, the father. I raised that child, educated him, he served in the army… for them to burn him alive in Tempi? Only the parents in Palestine can truly understand what it is to receive your child in a bag.”:
These were the powerful words of Pavlos Aslanidis, a Tempi victim’s father present at the press conference that was held on Friday by the Association of Relatives of the Tempi Victims “Tempi 2023,” in the wake of the past week’s developments.
Last week, an excerpt of the EODASAAM report concerning the fireball incident following the Tempi crash came under the spotlight, allegedly because it contained unauthorised findings of two European universities. EODASAAM president resigned over the issue.
Speaking at the press conference were the experts who authored the technical reports on behalf of the victims’ families — specifically, Konstantinos Chrysos, a chemical engineer at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and a certified expert by the Ministry of Transport, and Nikolaos Karnavos, also a chemical engineer from Aristotle University. Papadakis in the USA and Kokotsakis gave a televised analysis.
Mr. Karnavos presented his analysis (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), which has been included in the expert opinion of the technical consultants, showing that silicone oils cannot be scientifically proven to have caused the fire: “I challenge any colleague claiming that silicone oils caused the fire to put their conclusions on a single sheet of paper...”
He addressed the potential presence of fuel cargo, stating emphatically that it “is wrong for scientists to appear on TV and argue over how much fuel there was”, claiming that the “fact that fuel was present is indisputable — no one can scientifically deny it… The disagreement lies in how much fuel was there — but there was fuel, and it burned people.”
As to the General State Chemical Laboratory, he stated that all the reports they submitted to the investigating magistrate were (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) unsigned and incomplete.
Karnavos concluded (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) that “there is a 78% chance for such an accident to happen again” in the way the railway operates in the country. The conclusion was based on specific scientific models.
Maria Karystianou, president of the Association, announced that earlier on Friday, a lawsuit was filed against members of the pre-investigative committee who approved the report on Mr. Triantopoulos without having investigated the case.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, sixteen individuals were summoned (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) as suspects in an investigation over the stalled Contract 717, a €41 million EU-funded project to modernise Greece’s rail network. It has been argued that, should this project have been completed, the Tempi crash would never have happened.
What is the case with this damn EODASAAM Tempi report?
It is so complicated. So, let’s clear it up.
Christos Papadimitriou, head of the railway division of the National Organization for the Investigation of Aviation and Railway Accidents and Transport Safety (EO.DA.S.A.A.M), attempted to remove (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) from the Tempi report the section concerning the cause of the fireball The report had concluded that it was not silicone oils that caused it. Papadimitriou “justified this intervention in the work of the Investigative Committee by citing disagreements from the Universities of Ghent and Pisa”.
However, this happened “although those institutions had never been asked to weigh in on the fireball itself, but only on the validity of certain methods used in the experiments,” and this is why later “Mr. Papadimitriou admitted that there was no official disagreement from those universities regarding the fireball.”
Papadimitriou resigned (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) this week.
According (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) to Lifo, the EODASAAM report “on the cause of the fireball and the rejection of the Fire Department’s hypothesis about silicone oils is signed in the EO.DA.S.A.A.M. findings by Professor Thanasis Konstantopoulos of the School of Chemical Engineering at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, who has conducted research at Yale and received numerous awards. The intervention in the report and the removal of his findings ultimately could not be justified, so Mr. Papadimitriou later announced in a new statement that the report would not be removed after all.”
It shall be remembered that the prosecutor has ordered an investigation into how this paragraph ended up in the report - even involving a scientist who contributed to the conclusions. Will this order be recalled now?
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That’s all for this week; please forward this email to anyone you think might find it interesting and ask them to join our international community!
The AL team
