Evidence note · updated 2026-08-14 · collective authorship

What is the Catechism of Consent?

The Catechism of Consent is the Church’s question-and-answer companion to the Gene Codex. It translates the fifteen articles into the situations a person actually faces: who owns a DNA sample after sequencing, what genuine consent requires, what relatives are owed, and what an AI system may train on. Its answers are doctrine — statements of belief — not legal advice or a description of enforceable rights in any particular jurisdiction.

How the doctrine becomes a practical question

The catechism becomes practical when a question arrives before a decision. Before a consumer test, research consent form, or employer wellness program, a reader can ask the same sequence the page teaches: who collects the sample, what is derived from it, who receives copies, how long each copy remains, and how permission is withdrawn. The devotional framing supports reflection; the documented choices are the stewardship step.

What independent records establish

The ethical concern has verifiable public anchors. UNESCO adopted its Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights in 1997. Article 5 says that, for research, treatment, or diagnosis affecting a genome, “the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned shall be obtained.” Articles 6 and 7 separately address genetic discrimination and confidentiality. These are external principles; GeneSovereign’s claim that the genome is sacred remains doctrine and needs no invented scientific citation.

In the United States, Public Law 110-233—the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008—was enacted on May 21, 2008. Its two principal titles address health-insurance and employment discrimination. The statute defines a genetic test as analysis of human DNA, RNA, chromosomes, proteins, or metabolites that detects specified genetic changes. Those protections are real but bounded; this page does not present them as a universal genetic-privacy law.

A 2023 Federal Trade Commission genetic-privacy case provides a concrete custody warning. The FTC alleged that 1Health.io left nearly 2,400 health reports and raw genetic data from at least 227 consumers in publicly accessible cloud-storage buckets. The proposed order required third-party laboratories to destroy consumer DNA samples retained for more than 180 days. These figures describe that enforcement record, not GeneSovereign users or services.

Sources, scope, and collective authorship

This page is authored by the Church of GeneSovereign as an anonymous collective, also called the Council. The site has no named individual spokesperson or external professional profile, so none is implied. Machine-readable reason: collective_org_internal_identity_no_external_profile. Legal and regulatory statements above are limited to what the linked primary sources establish; devotional claims remain explicitly matters of belief.