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The Genetics Of Crime
by Aliya Sternstein
While tracking criminals and treating people's diseases usually do not involve the same techniques, some law enforcers are considering ways to apply genetic testing to apprehend suspects.
The far-off thinking is that detectives one day could analyze DNA left at crime scenes or stored in criminal databases to predict suspects' medical conditions. If a disease was rare enough and law enforcers could convince a judge to issue a subpoena, then they could search pharmacy records to see where the suspect has been residing.
At an Oct. 1 roundtable hosted by the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University, Greggory LaBerge, the scientific director of the Denver Police Department's crime laboratory, envisioned someday using databases about medical conditions to guide investigations.
"If we're looking for someone who needs, say, for example, certain kinds of medication that is specific to a disorder, if we trace that via a pharmacy, we may be able to look for that," he said during the event. LaBerge declined to comment for this story.
"It's not that they are there yet ... but the fact that they are saying that's where they could go is an interesting point of intersection," Kathy Hudson, the center's director, said in November.
The DNA Police
The idea of mixing genetics and law enforcement gives some people pause. The American Civil Liberties Union fears that police may try to develop a dubious "genetic profile" of a criminal, entering a realm akin to the Tom Cruise science-fiction movie "Minority Report." In the film, law enforcers detected future criminals before they committed offenses.
"We are in a whole new terrain," said Tania Simoncelli, a science adviser for ACLU's technology and liberty program. "If there was ever an example of function creep, this is it." She added that authorities essentially could be using DNA as a surveillance tool.
Part of the solution, she said, is barring the government from retaining any DNA permanently unless a suspect is actually convicted. "Unless we draw some clear lines very soon, we will all find ourselves in a database," Simoncelli said.
In the forensic context, there is no national standard to protect the privacy of personal health information. Hudson acknowledged that the Constitution gives people protection against unreasonable search and seizure but wondered, "Is doing the analysis of the DNA they left behind a search?"
A lack of rules for keeping DNA presents a problem as more samples are stored everyday for myriad purposes. For example, Hudson noted that the National Institutes of Health is contemplating a massive study of the U.S. population that would observe half a million people over a decade by collecting DNA samples and other medical information.
Right now, there are virtually no laws to prevent law enforcers from accessing that DNA, so researchers may have a hard time convincing people to donate their DNA to science, she said. "If we're asking people to give up their time, their blood, [and] letting researchers peer into the intimacies of their lives," Hudson said, "we should be able to give them some solid guarantee that harms won't come to them as a result of their generosity."
Edward Abrahams, executive director of the Personalized Medicine Coalition, which works to advance the science of tailoring treatments to people's genetic profiles, said that "collecting data is an issue because people fear discrimination in employment and insurance."
Confidentiality And Transparency
Researchers can obtain Health and Human Services Department certificates of confidentially, which allow them to keep data about their research subjects out of courts, even if subpoenaed. The catch is that researchers must request the certificates, and they are non-binding.
Even with certificates of confidentiality, researchers are not compelled to deny police access to their data. "It's basically the researcher's prerogative," Hudson said, adding that policymakers should mandate certificates of confidentiality and make them binding. Without the weight of law, "you can't tell patients that their DNA is safe from the eyes of badges," she said.
"I think all bets are off if you're tracking down some criminal," said William Thompson, a criminology, law and society professor at the University of California at Irvine. "Laws protecting the privacy of medical records are unlikely to stand up to a subpoena in a murder investigation. We do want police to be able to solve crimes."
He called for transparency in balancing the need for safety and the right to privacy. "I think the single thing that's most important to maintaining a rational system is to make sure that whatever the government is doing is open to public scrutiny," Thompson said, arguing that DNA profiles used by police should be made available anonymously to the scientific community.
Without an independent examination of the underlying laboratory work, he said, it is impossible to judge the likelihood of error in a particular case. Thompson has found the major source of error in DNA matching to be the failure of laboratories to follow rigorous scientific procedures for testing and interpretation of the evidence.
His 2006 paper "Tarnish On The Gold Standard" concludes that the "solid scientific foundation for DNA testing is no guarantee that DNA tests will be carried out in a reliable manner that produces accurate results."
Disclosure of DNA profiles also would be helpful in understanding the likelihood of coincidental matches -- a question at the core of every DNA "match" in criminal cases, Thompson said. Until disclosure happens, he added, "the jury is out on whether databases serve the public interest."
Rich Blood vs. Poor Blood
At the forum in October, LaBerge said external oversight does exist. All laboratories in the nation connected to the FBI's Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, are audited every two years by an outside entity against the FBI's standards for quality assurance.
"They also review the proficiency-testing records of the analysts to be sure that that analyst has been tested independently" on techniques used in the crime lab, LaBerge said.
There is a clear trend toward expansion of DNA databases for purposes of public safety, Thompson said. "The hot issue" right now, he said, is familial DNA searching, where authorities who cannot make exact matches find similar DNA profiles that likely are of family members of suspects. The practice raises many questions: Can you investigate the relatives? How close would the match have to be? What about false-positive links to suspects?
The general public is not too concerned now, Thompson said, because most of the suspects in CODIS are minorities and poor people. It has become "an underclass database."
Some states, like California, are starting to pass laws permitting suspects' profiles to be deleted from the database if they are not convicted. But removal can be an expensive process. "Rich people are going to be able to afford their way out," Thompson said.
"If you really wanted to do it fairly," he said, "in my opinion, you'd make the database universal."
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