Even the inventor of DNA evidence is worried about its abuse, says robert matthews |
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As the inventor of DNA fingerprinting, Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys might be expected to do what most scientists do these days, and talk up the wonders of his research at every opportunity. But he has always fretted about its potential for abuse - and now he fears his invention is undergoing 'mission creep'.
You can see his point. Since 2004 the police have had powers to take DNA from anyone arrested for any recordable offence, and keep it indefinitely, even if they are subsequently released. Even witnesses asked for DNA have no right to have it removed from the database once stored there.
All this bothers Prof Jeffreys, not least because the DNA could be put to far more sinister uses by governments even more overweening than the current lot. His concern is echoed by civil liberties groups, who talk of the UK being turned into a nation of suspects.
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| What should worry us all is DNA evidence’s supposed infallibility |
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What should worry us all is a far more sinister characteristic of DNA evidence: its supposed infallibility. With its apparent ability to put odds of millions-to-one on the guilt of the accused, DNA evidence brooks no dissent.
Yet cock-ups can and have happened. Ask Raymond Easton, who was arrested in 1999 for a burglary in Bolton on the basis of a match from the DNA database. He suffered from Parkinson's Disease so severe the police conceded he couldn't possibly have been the culprit.
In 2004, a woman fingered by DNA as a murderer proved to be a rape victim whose DNA had ended up on clothing in an Australian forensic lab. Last year in the US, a man accused of a sex crime turned out to have received bone-marrow from the true culprit, thus giving him a similar DNA fingerprint.
Such cases show that the only sure thing about DNA is that more 'fingerprinting' means more cock-ups. 
FIRST POSTED NOVEMBER 2, 2006
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