What Australia To - DNA Identikit
Thursday, 7 November 2002
DNA found at crime scene can be a clincher in prosecuting a suspect. But what if there is no suspect? In the near future, police might be able to build an incredibly detailed profile of a wanted person - including their sex, age, height, eye colour, skin colour and ethnicity - just from a drop of blood.
A company in the US is already promoting their DNA profiling services as a useful new tool to help catch criminals. But how accurate are these tests and what are the ethical problems surrounding their use? Here in Australia the police forces are divided over whether this new technology can help, or harm, the innocent. (full transcript...)
Reporter: Karina Kelly
Producer: Paul Faint
Researcher: Robyn Smith
Story Contacts:
Dr James Robertson
Director of Forensic Services at AFP in Canberra
Australian Federal Police
Dr Robert Williamson
Geneticist and Director of Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
Melbourne Australia
Tony Frudakis
CEO
DNAPrint Genomics
Related Sites:
Murdoch Children’s Research Institute - Personnel
DNAPrint genomics
Australian Federal Police
Full Program Transcript:
Narration: After the Bali bombing, Australians are acutely aware of the need to identify those guilty of a terrible crime as quickly as possible. Now, an American company claim they have developed new technology, which could revolutionise the way this is done. It uses DNA from evidence found at the crime scene to build a physical profile of what a suspect looks like. They call it a ‘DNA Identikit’.
Tony Frudakis: By being able to provide a molecular DNA based eyewitness for every crime scene, it certainly would have substantial use.
Narration: It seems like every police officer’s dream…being able to tell a suspect’s eye, hair and skin colour… even their racial mix… all from a single drop of blood. But does this new forensic science threaten our genetic privacy?
Could DNA identify you?
Narration: After the Bali bombing, Australians are acutely aware of the need to identify those guilty of a terrible crime as quickly as possible. Now, an American company claim they have developed new technology, which could revolutionise the way this is done. It uses DNA from evidence found at the crime scene to build a physical profile of what a suspect looks like. They call it a ‘DNA Identikit’.
Tony Frudakis: By being able to provide a molecular DNA based eyewitness for every crime scene, it certainly would have substantial use.
Narration: It seems like every police officer’s dream…being able to tell a suspect’s eye, hair and skin colour… even their racial mix… all from a single drop of blood. But does this new forensic science threaten our genetic privacy?
Dr James Robertson: Once we start to go in to look at personalised information, where do you draw the line? Is it next then we’re going to say well it’s okay to tell someone’s eye colour and hair colour what’s the problem with looking at the disease status.
Dr Robert Williamson: When we start to look at genes for height or weight or colour, those genes are not unique to you. They’ll be present in your brothers and sisters, in your family, in your ethnic group, possibly in the whole population and that makes them far more difficult to interpret.
Narration: These days police use face imaging (or identikit pictures) to help identify and track down suspects.
Narration: The problem is that they come from eyewitness accounts and these are notoriously unreliable. And sometimes, there is no eyewitness at all.
Narration: If during the crime, some blood or other human cells were left behind… police currently use that sample to get what’s called a DNA Profile. But this DNA profile is just like a barcode. It can’t tell you what the person looks like. So it can’t help to track down the criminal. That’s where the DNA Identikit comes in.
Tony Frudakis: Yes the existing tests, while very useful for matching samples with individuals gives no information about what that individual looks like. With the tests that we're developing the physical profile would give them information that they could use to narrow the focus of their investigation to find that person.
Narration: The DNA Identikit is a series of four tests that examine the genes determining hair colour, eye colour, skin shade and racial mixture (or ethnicity). The company claims the tests are nearly a hundred percent accurate.
Tony Frudakis: Currently the ancestry test is of supreme accuracy. We have blindly tested it on a very large number of samples. And so far we are yet to get one wrong.
Narration: But genetics expert Bob Williamson warns that when it comes to appearance, DNA can never be 100% accurate.
Dr Robert Williamson: I think what worries those of us who are concerned about civil liberties is that if you say there’s a 70% chance that someone is Asian or a 60% chance that someone is from an Italian background this will be over interpreted and the police will just think that’s it, that’s the person we’re looking for and we’ll go for that person and I don’t think that will be good either for civil liberties or for law enforcement.
Narration: And of course genetics only determines how a person might look. How they actually look is shaped by many other things. How old they are, how much food they eat and how much sun exposure they get can all radically change someone’s appearance. And when it comes to hair anything’s possible.
Dr James Robertson: I can certainly tell you this, that the forensic science service, which has published work on the red, on red hair it’s only about 70% accurate and here is the problem. If we just take the red hair as an example what is red hair? My professional background is a hair examiner. Well you can change red hair easily. It’s called dying it.
Narration: But the biggest issue thrown up by this technology is the right to genetic privacy. Until now, we have been assured by police that the DNA being tested is only ‘junk’ DNA. Parts of our genetic code that reveal nothing about what we are like. It can only be used to match an individual to a sample. But if DNA identikits start being used, then far more information about us will be accessible to police. They’ll be looking at the ‘working genes’ the ones that make us what we are. And eye, skin and hair colour is just the beginning.
Tony Frudakis: The goal is to provide the information that's present on a driver's license such as the facial features, the distance between the eyes, the width of the nose, the length of the face. Whether the earlobes are connected. Of course the ancestral proportions, eye colour, hair colour, height and weight as well.
Narration: The question is where do you draw the line? How much further should police go in their search to find the perpetrator of a crime? Should they also look at genes that tell them the likelihood of certain behaviour, or certain diseases?
Dr Robert Williamson: I think that the DNA sequences that matter, the ones that determine health and disease, the ones that determine behaviour, the ones that interact with the environment and say whether we’re at high risk of cancer, high risk of asthma, high risk of Alzheimer’s I think these are very, very personal property and I don’t think they should be in the hands of the police or employers or insurance companies. I think they are really the property and the privilege of the person himself or herself.
Narration: James Robertson is concerned that public confidence in the way we do DNA testing today may be undermined if we start looking at personal areas of DNA.
Dr James Robertson: Once we start looking at personalised information… which is what this is doing, we’re looking at bits of the DNA albeit complicated bits that tell you about people’s individual information then we’re moving away from the very tenant that we’ve developed - DNA testing in forensic science, which is that the bits of the DNA we look at don’t tell you anything about the personal individual.
Narration: But the manufacturers of the DNA Identikit are confident we’ll get the balance right.
Tony Frudakis: I think that genomics technology will be used for the betterment of mankind to help provide for safer environments for us to raise our children. And I think society will do a good job at establishing the limits to which DNA testing will have to abide.
Narration: Whether you feel comfortable with it or not, one thing’s for certain… this technology is not going to go away.
Dr James Robertson: Trying to stop this would be like standing on the shore like King Canute and asking the waves of the sea - the tide not to come in. It’s going to happen. The issue is to have a proper debate about what it’s real value is and where it fits into the overall picture with respect to DNA and the use made of it by investigators.
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