Texas sued over sale of baby blood samples

AUSTIN, TX The Texas Civil Rights Project says officials at the Texas Department of State Health Services lied when they previously said the state had not sold or distributed the samples to private companies or federal agencies.

The state in December 2009 announced it would destroy about 5 million samples that the civil rights group had said were improperly collected without parental consent and stored indefinitely for scientific research.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in San Antonio seeks to recover and destroy the samples the group says were sold by the state.

A message left by The Associated Press for a spokesperson with DSHS was not immediately returned Wednesday afternoon.

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