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Yale Law Student Wants Government To Have Everybody's DNA
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Seringhaus, a Yale Law School student, writes in the NY Times, 'To Stop Crime, Share Your Genes.' In order to prevent discrimination when it comes to collecting DNA samples from criminals (and even people who are simply arrested), he proposes that the government collect a DNA profile from everybody, perhaps at birth (yes, you heard that right)."
Regarding the obvious issue of genetic privacy, Seringhaus makes this argument: "Your sensitive genetic information would be safe. A DNA profile distills a person’s complex genomic information down to a set of 26 numerical values, each characterizing the length of a certain repeated sequence of 'junk' DNA that differs from person to person. Although these genetic differences are biologically meaningless — they don’t correlate with any observable characteristics — tabulating the number of repeats creates a unique identifier, a DNA 'fingerprint.' The genetic privacy risk from such profiling is virtually nil, because these records include none of the health and biological data present in one’s genome as a whole."
Then feel free to post a retraction to your very naive statement.
Yeah, I remember being 5 or 6 years old and wondering why the whole world wasn't just nice to each other and all our problems would be solved.
Unfortunately, I grew up to have to understand the real world.
This guy reminds me of a cute little 5 year old. His heart is in the right place and he just wants everything fair and nice. However, those are some BIG ASSUMPTIONS he is making:
1) A sample will be destroyed after it is used to create a DNA profile.
2) Only law enforcement will have access
3) Since more Americans are in the database there is a less likelihood of government misuse.
Actually, I am not sure we can call those assumptions. More like hypothetical requirements for an argument, like, the Sun will be Purple tomorrow.
All 3 of those assumptions have been proven to be false, time and time and time and time again. Wasn't it just recently that we found out Texas A&M was participating in collecting blood and tissue samples from newborns without the parents knowledge and consent? Were they not also used for purposes the parents were unaware of and could object to?
Are we really to believe that only law enforcement would have access when any PI with a few bucks can currently gain access to supposedly proteced information that only law enforcement officials should be accessing?
Has not the goverment been caught time and time and time again abusing databases by using them for purposes well outside of the justifications and reasons for their initial creation? Doesn't the goverment quite frequently change their minds about what they will do with resources after the fact?
Sure, if all of those assumptions are held to be true, I would agree with him about making a DNA database. However, it is not my cynicism and disillusionment in goverment that causes me to be skeptical of those assumptions. It's COLD HARD REALITY, FACTS, AND PRECENDENCE. If you want to ignore that, and let them move on with a clean slate, that's your choice. I choose to remember how often the government lies to me and abuses me.
Until someone eventually find a use for that so-called "junk" DNA.
What... What!?! To prevent the system from singling people out for abuse we are going to abuse everybody? Only a lawyer could think this wasn't perverted logic.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
I'm not as interested in keeping my genetic medical profile secret as in preventing EXACTLY THIS.
This has so many flavors of wrong, so toxic to freedom, and so indicative of the mindset of "If you have nothing to hide..." that there's really only one response I can pull together. It's not eloquent, but it does, I feel, have a certain crude charm.
"FUCK. YOU."
Stick to law, not biology Mr. Seringhaus (and honestly, I'm not too hot on you entering law). The genetic fingerprint works OK for identifying the guilty person out of several suspects, but it does not work if you have everyone on a database. If the chance of two unrelated people having the same fingerprint is (and I don't know the actual number) one in ten million and if you have every American in a database then given a DNA sample you'll get thirty people, twenty nine of which will be dragged into court through no fault of their own. Put simply, this is a profoundly stupid idea.
This student is the kind of larval shyster whose contempt for the bill of rights should exclude him from ever being allowed to practice law in the United States. Kick him out of law school.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
who the frack cares what a college student has to say?
Like it or not, today's kids are the ones who will be running things tomorrow. Especially the ones coming from Ivy league law schools.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Aside from the obvious arguments on the complete invasion of privacy, junk DNA is just DNA that we /think/ does not actually express itself with any observable or measurable trait. However, it's quite possible that how a gene expresses may be discovered at a later date. Imagine it's discovered that certain thinking patterns or genetic disease with high cost of treatment have a correlation to certain sequences of formerly junk DNA. In insurance company or government hands, I don't see how that information would be used in anything but an oppressive manner.
And of course, the particular set of digits which result from one's DNA profile is condition of the enzyme used to slice up the DNA sample. With that large of a sample space false positives are all but assured.
"Your sensitive genetic information would be safe." It won't be safe for long with databases like these around.
It's simply naïve to hope that all those in political power will follow a course of action other than acting to get more power and more control. Most people will follow the rules and take sincere interest in their fellow man, but the few who don't are those you have ward against.
Imagine the next argument about how much better the government could make life for people if "Your sensitive genetic information" were also collected. This data would help medicine a lot. As we move toward more genetic basis for defining diseases, and defining the interaction of drugs within different people based on their genetics, there is a very strong argument that scientists could make health care better with broad access to the exact genetic information of all patients. Genetics coupled with disease phenotypes, frequencies, and drug interactions with quantitative metrics of effectiveness leads to revolutionary breakthroughs in drug development.
But to get this data would eliminate all aspects of personal privacy regarding your health.
If you believe in property at any level, your own body is unequivocally the one thing you own without exception. Unless there are overriding and unequivocal public health reasons to give someone else control over your body, the only answer is simply "No."
What you were supposed to say was:
I feel a great disturbance in the force, as if the Overton Window cried out after being shoved to the right very, very hard.
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
about this steady stream of idiots who are willing to mindlessly trust the government. Have the horrible lessons of the twentieth century already been forgotten?
The Elected Nobility won't keep their promises. "Oh it's only 26 markers... we can't predict your health from that," and then in ten or twenty years they'll want to sequence your entire genome, so they can create a society like GATTACA.
I've seen this before. The Nobles promised income tax would only affect people over $100,000 not the commoners. They said Medicare would only cost 60 billion, and that it would REDUCE healthcare costs, which of course it did the exact opposite. And they claimed the social security number would Never be used for anything else, but the SS administration.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice.....
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Because we all know how MD5 turned out..
The less data you have from the DNA, the more matches you are going to find. The reason things like DNA and fingerprints work is you have a smallish possibility set. You have 10 suspects, you compare the fingerprints, one matches, nine don't well there you go. In all cases with fingerprints and DNA you are saying "This item matches 1 in X people in the population." Now that's usually pretty good, like 1 in a million or something. However not so useful if your sample size is 300,000,000 and growing.
Also there's the fact that DNA tests aren't cheap, or particularly quick. They aren't the kind of thing you can use for every criminal case, it'd be way too expensive, not to mention unnecessary. I can't see that this would get used all the time. Fingerprints are done often because they are pretty cheap to test, but DNA? Not so much at this point.
So I can't really see this of being a whole lot of use to law enforcement either.
Why don't we try this only with Yale law students?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Wow.
Considering with the current DNA sampling methods, my DNA will match one or two million other people on the planet, a good few thousand of them being in my own country...
No thanks, I have no desire to admit and take the blame for the crimes those other people did and were caught at.
Someone should direct this so called law student to our constitutional amendments. He only has to get through the first 5 or so :P
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Which would be great if such fingerprints didn't run into the birthday paradox.
The chances of any 2 random individuals sharing the same profile is tiny.
The chances of getting a lot of matches in a large population are extremely high.
Also those odds are not entirely independent, second cousin has a higher chance of matching with me than a random stranger so crank up the odds a little more.
And thanks to all the CSI crap DNA evidence is like magical-never-wrong fairy dust.
-They find DNA at the scene.
-Birthday paradox comes into play
-I happen to be in the same city at about the right time.
-lazy prosecutor
-I'm fucked.
I have nothing to gain from adding my DNA to such a database and plenty to lose.
Yup. This guy is an idiot. How does he know government can always be trusted with the information, among other things.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
The odds of two non-identical twin individuals sharing the same 26 marker genetic fingerprint are several billion to one. THe reason it is a bad idea is that it's unconstitutional, a severe violation of privacy and certain for abuse.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
But every one of them is a HUMAN. Who are you going to most likely share a lot of genes with? Your family. Most families live somewhat together.
See a problem here?
Add into that that the sequencing of gene data at a crimescene is not a pristine sequencing lab, you have yet more problems.
America is already one giant prison - you have numbers, don't you?
Now, the deal is sealed.
Signed,
-- Dead Jefferson
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Please explain how a DNA fingerprint (note that this is not a copy of your entire genome kept on file) represents a problem.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
you can't expect people from yale to always be smart. The smart ones usually don't seek publicity.
A DNA sample is taken of every child born in the US, to test for potential genetic diseases. The original specimen is stored for a period of time, based on state laws. Here are some citations:
Genetic Screening
Controversy
Specimen retention by state
And we swear, cross our hearts and hope to die, that we won't actually keep a copy of your entire genome on file.
----Signed
--------Your Friendly Federal Agency
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Are you sure about those odds?
State crime lab analyst Kathryn Troyer was running tests on Arizona's DNA database when she stumbled across two felons with remarkably similar genetic profiles.
The men matched at nine of the 13 locations on chromosomes, or loci, commonly used to distinguish people.
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.
Wikipedia is reporting the FBIs estimated numbers
The actual numbers are much worse.
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/20/local/me-dna20
Among about 65,000 felons, there were 122 pairs that matched at nine of 13 loci. Twenty pairs matched at 10 loci. One matched at 11 and one at 12, though both later proved to belong to relatives.
Or just google: dna "arizona search"
Also realize that for most crime scene samples, it's generally sufficiently degraded that you are only going to get 9 loci out of it. It doesn't matter if you have 13 loci in your database, if the comparison sample only has 9 that can be amplified out using PCR.
-- Terry
If someone were out to get you, either for reasons that you did something, or you just happened to be there, it would become a reliable way to convict the person of choice.
"Your honor, we have on record sequence 121221212122...111. for Mr. Smythe, as stored in numerical format for his DNA. At the crime scene we also have the DNA matching 121221212122...111.
Mr. Smythe was in the country at the time. He also does not have a viable alibi, as he says he was at home, alone, sleeping at 0400 on March 15, 2010.
We have produced 4 reliable witnesses, all with the local law enforcement community, who will swear under oath that he was observed within 100 meters of the location of the crime.
And finally we have this piece of mail, with Mr. Smythe's fingerprints on it, which was found in the parking lot outside of the site of the crime."
The piece of mail? Junk mail I threw in the trash, that they moved to the crime scene.
The "reliable witnesses"? Those willing to testify to finish off the case.
And the DNA evidence? The sequence number was pulled from my record, and the "DNA expert" simply testified to the fact that it was mine.
Depending on where you are, the levels of corruption go deep. Having my DNA on file definitely doesn't make me feel very good about future legal problems that are not of my own doing.
When the defendant wins on the basis of DNA testing, it's usually that they have an unknown sample, and the defendants DNA is also an unknown sample, and then they don't match. I wouldn't want to make it easier for them, to already know what mine is, and ensure that mine will be what is found. It doesn't actually have to be mine, they just have to testify that it matched. Expert testimony is only as trustworthy as the expert.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
And anyone who thinks you're being paranoid has never been part of a criminal trial.
I've fought a few simple traffic tickets and watched how everyone from the attorneys to the cops to the judge would just lie and gloss over laws. It's a joke.
People who are more afraid than the average street criminal than the government are people with a totally broken view of reality. (Especially since fear of the street criminal is a mindset pushed by the government most of the time when they want to get more funding and raise taxes.)
Spot on, JWSmythe, spot on, citizen!
Plus, there's that privatization thing. Whenever anything becomes federalized, the next step is corporatized ("privatized"). Not only does this cede extraordinary power to the power elites, they have probable monopoly on genetic engineering knowledge, plus future tissue engineering for organ/limb replacement, etc., etc., ad infinitum. They forever work to keep their monopolies on capital, land and knowledge.