In September 1987, Colin Pitchfork, a baker from central England, became the first criminal in the world to be caught by DNA evidence, for the rape and murder of two 15-year-old girls.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment the following January.
Twenty years on, analyzing DNA from blood, hair, saliva or semen at crime scenes is ubiquitous and has helped solve hundreds of thousands of crimes. But the scale of the forensic revolution is causing unease in Britain, where the government is considering casting the DNA testing net wider by allowing police to take swabs from people committing minor crimes, like dropping litter.
Does Arlo Guthrie know about this?
Alec Jeffreys, the genetics professor who invented DNA fingerprinting in 1984 and went on to help police crack the Pitchfork case, is justifiably proud of his discovery.
He has a blurry image of the first ever DNA fingerprint on the wall of his office at Leicester University in central England. Yet he is worried. He fears society has failed to grasp the ethical issues of DNA collection, its potential for abuse and the limitations of genetic analysis.
“The legislation is lagging really rather seriously behind the use of the database,” he said. “I take the simple view that my genome is mine. Under some circumstances, I’ll allow the state limited access. But prying into my DNA …? I am wholly opposed to that.”
The debate grows in the UK – they’re far “ahead” of us. Not that the brain trusts in our Government aren’t sneaking up on the idea.
Like CCTV, the question of public good easily crosses over into an end to privacy. Can RFID tags be far behind? And universal DNA sampling?
Officer Obie wouldn’t know that the judge would not be able to view the results anyway.
I know too many here disagree, so lets “talk.”
I see NO reason whatsoever for dna swabs not to be taken at birth and used there after as society directs.
In GOUSA right now, how many thousand innocent people are in jail for crimes they did not commit WHILE the dna sample sits in a refrigerator untested?
I am for “privacy” but not when it lets people guilty of criminal activities remain free and innocent people stay in jail.
The privacy argument I do buy is that is should not be used for discrimination as in an increased likelihood to get cancer or be gay? (or straight by equal measure?). Then, I think, why not for that too? WHAT IS TRUTH? and how does privacy trump it?
So, thinking thru it, most of the arguments I have seen posted are really an argument against “the truth.” Seems to me if I am more likely to get cancer than the average person, I should know that and take appropriate steps. Like maybe voting for national healthcare?????
The truth and devotion too it can have many beneficial effects. Why not give it a try?
I usually lean toward privacy over convenience, bobbo. Maybe I don’t know enough about this stuff, but I haven’t heard a compelling reason why DNA should be kept so closely guarded. Seems like there are so many good uses for DNA evidence. Maybe there could be a database that is inadmissible in court as evidence, and a separate database that is admissible. You only end up in the latter if you’re convicted of a felony, for instance.
I don’t know all the implications, though – I think it needs more discussion.
Hmm.. Just thought of one way it could be misused – thinking about your cancer scenario. What if the insurance companies started using these at-birth DNA samples to screen out people with genetic dispositions toward health problems, and reject them for insurance. Your healthcare could be totally screwed over from birth unless you’re born a millionaire.
Great, these asshats can’t keep information they have NOW straight and secure from people getting their hands on it by stealing laptops, etc. Couple that to Larry, Curley and Moe running the crime labs and you’ve got a ready made supply of “customers” for the Prison Industrial Complex. Whether they are guilty or not. And once some actual scientists get all of this data, they’ll discover that when you look at all the DNA patterns out there, I’ll bet they find out that everybody’s DNA ain’t as “unique” as the BS science on CSI would have us believe. Not that Joe Sixpack would get a break in the courtroom even if there are 647 people who match his DNA profile in a fifty kilometer radius of the crime.
3–Sean==Discrimination in healthcare is very often mentioned as would discrimination in promotion on the job. Still, the truth is the truth. Why should someone more likely to die be put on a long term developmental track?==AND very importantly, as I posted, if such tendency were known at birth, wouldn’t the individual be in a better position to protect himself?==and again, such knowledge “might” be another motivater towards national healthcare making all such discrimination less likely to occur because its effects would be moderated.
4–Sean==yes, thats why a national healthcare system would be even more advised than it is already. Note, the only difference–you are born with a statistical genetic predispostion towards cancer. If you know it, you can take action. If you don’t know it, you go forward blindly. My choice would be to act with knowledge.
5–Get Smart===yes, you should.
Yup, yup. Since someone might steal information – better not to acquire or store data at all. Ayup.
Since someone might steal information – better not to acquire or store data at all.
As Bugs would say, “what a maroon”.
Your statement is rendered meaningless by your use of the word “might” rather than the correct term “will”.
7–moss==I take your comment as sarcasm, so thanks.
8–UTH–of course such info will be “accessed” for knowledge cannot be stolen. In other words, privacy will be violated.
Can you offer a real world example of such bad use that would outweight the many good uses???
Real World?
One of the issues that has not been discussed here is that the bigger and more diverse the database, the more spurious matches you wil get.
Many attorneys and expert witnesses have been guilty of vastly overstating the confidence of DNA matches (millions and millions to one etc.) and this will only get worse. If you have 60 million database entries, then the chance that a search using your “fingerprint” hits another entry is much higher than if only a few thousand entries are searched. We currently have too little good information about genetic diversity to come up with good estimates of the rates of such collisions, but they will be of finite likelihood. This is especially true if the database (and arrest rate) has a ethnic or racial bias – since some markers are more common in some ethnic/geographical groups.
It is possible that, like fingerprints, genetic matches will have to use more “points of commonality” than they currently do to get around this problem. See for example the case of Brandon Mayfield.
And at what point is the SCOTUS going to review a DNA case in regards to the 4th and 5th amendments?
How soon (and I do believe that it’s sooner than later) will it be before somebody surreptitiously takes your DNA and frames you for committing the crime that THEY did?
We’ve already got finger print scanners getting spoofed by Gummi Bears (yeah, that’s real high tech there…) Spoofing DNA will be easier as time goes on.
And then what happens with the reliability of DNA evidence?
Yeah, it’s a bad idea. We already have our prison full with 1/3 of them being illegal aliens. This could easily bring that percentage up the 3/4 area. But at least if they take an address with the sample we could start to get a handle of how many illegal aliens are in the US.
Of course since we’re second class citizens in the US, meaning we are legally here and only the rich, new media and political class qualify for first class immunity to criminal prosecution, the illegals be a special class wouldn’t be sampled and wouldn’t be arrested. I’m surprised they haven’t started racial quotas for prisons.
But, I sure somewhere there’s a demoncrat that’s proposed such a thing. I wonder will they arrest innocent non-minorities to bring the ratio up or just let out the criminal rapist, burglars, and other associated killers.
10–Alan==totally correct but irrelevant?
“Not a match” still 100% accurate?
As to false positives, ok==lower the statistical probability from 268 Billion to one, to anything less. One million to one and the perp was seen in the area is “beyond a reasonable doubt” in my book.
As computers and testing get cheaper, you can have as many points of comparability as one might wish?
#1 – Nailed it. DNA would not have helped.
#0 – The Massacree is a pretty obscure reference for the youngsters.
bobbo has what I would call a “right-wingnut” orientation.
Unconstitutional
Enough said.