Could your DNA belong to somebody else?
You can barely move these days without bumping into some sort of advance in our understanding of genetics - whether it’s understanding the markers related to a disease like Parkinson’s, or the plethora of companies offering to sequence your genome, like Iceland’s deCODE, or the Google-backed 23andMe.
But just as our understanding of genetics grows every day, so the potential problems with using this sort of information become apparent.
A perfect example has just reared its head: DNA analysis has long been used in courts as a nearly infallible way of identifying a criminal, but it turns out that it’s not so easy. According to a report in the LA Times, crime lab scientist Kathryn Troyer discovered two unrelated people who matched 9 out of 13 chromosomal points - which would usually be enough to secure a conviction.
The FBI estimated the odds of unrelated people sharing those genetic markers to be as remote as 1 in 113 billion. But the mug shots of the two felons suggested that they were not related: One was black, the other white.
In the years after her 2001 discovery, Troyer found dozens of similar matches — each seeming to defy impossible odds.
As word spread, these findings by a little-known lab worker raised questions about the accuracy of the FBI’s DNA statistics and ignited a legal fight over whether the nation’s genetic databases ought to be opened to wider scrutiny.
What does this mean? It doesn’t mean that DNA itself isn’t unique to each individual - just that our current methods of interpreting test results are not as good as we thought. This is problematic, since it opens the door to every DNA-based conviction ever achieved being challenged (such a scary possibility that the FBI has tried to rubbish Troyer’s work).
Should we investigate every case again? Or just concentrate on stepping up the game?
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Database Management » Blog Archive » Could your DNA belong to somebody else? Jul 22, 2008 at 5:30 pm
[...] Miguels Blog wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt You can barely move these days without bumping into some sort of advance in our understanding of genetics - whether it’s understanding the markers related to a disease like Parkinson’s, or the plethora of companies offering to sequence your genome, like Iceland’s deCODE, or the Google-backed 23andMe. But just as our understanding of genetics grows every day, so the potential problems with using this sort of information become apparent. A perfect example has just reared its head: DNA analysis [...]