To my consternation, I just learned via an email from a friend that incoming students at UC Berkeley are being asked to provide DNA samples. Voluntarily, of course:

Instead of the usual required summer-reading book, this year's incoming freshmen at the University of California, Berkeley, will get something quite different: a cotton swab on which they can, if they choose, send in a DNA sample.

The university said it would analyze the samples, from inside students' cheeks, for three genes that help regulate the ability to metabolize alcohol, lactose and folates.

Those genes were chosen not because they indicate serious health risks but because students with certain genetic markers may be able to lead healthier lives by drinking less, avoiding dairy products or eating more leafy green vegetables.

That's easy enough for a 55-year old libertarian to say. But thinking back to when I was eighteen, I didn't have access to the kind of 20/20 hindsight I have now, and I might have thought "How cool! Now I get to know all about my genetic health risks!"

As to invasion of privacy, banish the thought! This is all confidential, and no one will be able to find out which student's information pertains to whose. Except the stated purpose of this project is to soften the students up for what's coming:

The testing will be voluntary and confidential, with no one at Berkeley knowing which sample comes from which student.

Each freshman will get two bar code labels, one to put on the sample and one to keep. After the genotyping is complete, the results will be posted on a Web site using the bar code identification, so only the person who provided the DNA sample will know whose it is.

"In the decade ahead, the new genetics is going to penetrate everyday medical practice," said Mark Schlissel, dean of biology at Berkeley. "We wanted to give students a sense of what's coming, through genes that can provide them with useful information. I think it's one of the best things we've done in years."

But some bioethicists say the whole idea of genetic testing outside a medical setting is troubling....

The implications are Orwellian, and I worry that the kids are being softened up when they're too young to fully understand and think things through.

Moreover, this fits into a disturbing pattern of policy implementation I have noticed over the years. First, people are asked to do something "voluntarily" (like, for example, cutting off your dog's nuts or switching over to the "right" lightbulbs). Once people become accustomed to doing such things voluntarily, they quite naturally become unsympathetic to those recalcitrant few who don't. And the good citizens will then be quite willing to support new laws, with criminal penalties for not doing what every good citizen should.