genes

This page looks at DNA as a biometric technology.

It covers -

• DNA - your genes as your identifier

    DNA

Identification on the basis of an individual's unique, stable and measurable genetic characteristics has gained fundamental judicial, administrative and scientific recognition over the past two decades.

DNA-based identification - based on examination of tissue, semen or other samples - appears to be highly accurate when correctly conducted (most challenges in recent years have centred on the contamination or substitution of samples) and has thus resulted in proposals for large-scale DNA registers. It has also resulted in proposals for DNA-based 'authenticity labelling' of indigenous artworks.

In practice, DNA identification is technically challenging, expensive and not particular quick (eg upwards of 15 minutes). Accordingly its use centres on retrospective forensic applications - 'who has been here' - rather than on-the-spot verification and screening.

Community perceptions differ, with studies suggesting that some people are unconcerned about DNA collection/use and that others worried about potential misuse of information in DNA registers (unsurprising given broader concerns about genetic privacy highlighted earlier in this note) or uncomfortable with perceived invasive collection mechanisms (eg providing a swab of cells from inside their mouth or a blood specimen).

Those concerns are likely to increase given recent media coverage about poor practice in the laboratory and the alleged ease of 'salting' an innocent person's DNA at a crime scene. The sci-fi film Gattaca was thus supposedly the inspiration for a DNA-substitution scam in subverting a UK community register.

Points of entry to the literature include DNA and the Criminal Justice System (Cambridge: MIT Press 2004) edited by David Lazer, Bioinformatics in the Post-Genomic Era (Upper Saddle River: Addison-Wesley Longman 2005) by Jeff Augen and The Genetic Imaginary: DNA in the Canadian Criminal Justice System (Toronto: Uni of Toronto Press 2004) by Neil Gerlach. Other works are highlighted in the discussion of privacy here.

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