Prairie State Wire

A concerned activist is alerting parents to SHIELD Illinois’s policy of requesting parent permission to store child DNA samples for “future research purposes.”

SHIELD Illinois provides home COVID-19 testing.

“No one knows whether or how DNA data might be used for ‘future research purposes,’” James F. Holderman  III, the founder and executive director of Protect Parents' Rights, told Prairie State Wire. “Even the proposal of a totally open-ended agreement regarding future research on schoolchildren's saliva should send shivers down the spines of every parent in Illinois. Advancements in technology are occurring at a staggering pace in the life sciences and there is very little transparency and almost no public input as to what things that can be done, should be done.”

Holderman added that through allowing SHIELD Illinois to store samples from children for future research purposes the questions grow about Gov. JB Pritzker’s involvement.

“When SHIELD Illinois, possibly at the behest of Gov. Pritzker, is attempting to collect schoolchildren’s saliva without any restrictions, it is clear this is no longer about testing for COVID-19 to prevent spread in schools. The harvesting and storing of a child’s DNA, under the guise of COVID-19 testing, sounds like the plot line of a dystopian, science-fiction novel.”

Pritzker, who is worth $3.4 billion, was previously noted as having financial relationships with testing companies.

Illinois Policy reported last year that he had financial stakes in two testing companies that were set to make millions off of the pandemic.

Holderman said Pritzker’s involvement appears to go deeper.

“Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been clear to me that Gov. Pritzker and University of Illinois' SHIELD team are in league and have an agenda,” he said. “The governor has relentlessly promoted COVID-19 testing generally and University of Illinois' COVID SHIELD saliva-based test specifically, to the point of attacking and eliminating SHIELD's competition in Illinois schools. There is an incredible amount of money sloshing around, but, that money is a tool for Gov. Pritzker, not his end goal. At this point, it's pretty evident that the governor's goal is consolidating power and control.”

Holderman also pointed to an investigation Attorney General Kwame Raoul launched an investigation into SafeGuard, a competitor to SHIELD, after the company stepped in when SHIELD’s testing rollout went awry.

Holderman said other aspects of Pritzker’s connection to health sciences in the field of immuno-engineering should not be overlooked.

“In 2019, thanks to a $100M commitment by The Pritzker Foundation, the University of Chicago created The Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, which is advancing ‘immunoengineering’ to ‘not only understand the immune system, but also to manipulate, stimulate and eventually control it,’” he said. “I suspect scientists would have to ‘test' a person quite often, perhaps twice a week, in order to learn how to ‘control’ their immune system.

Holderman called on Pritzker to be transparent.

“I believe the solution to most problems with government are easily solved with transparency. Gov. Pritzker's very first Executive Order dealt with improving transparency among all State agencies/departments,” Holderman said. “Like most of his actions since taking office, it was nothing more than a smokescreen and the reality behind the smokescreen is starkly different from his smiley presentations.

“I personally had to file a lawsuit to force the governor's office to produce the University of Illinois' COVID-19 modeling, which the governor said he relied upon to shut down the state and issue his stay-at-home order in March 2020. In my opinion, that modeling was highly questionable at best and outright fraudulent at worst.”