Slate has an interesting article, O Brother, Where Art Thou? It’s time for legislators to look more closely at familial searches of DNA databases. The principle is simple. States and national governments are already collecting genetic material from persons who have had brushes with the criminal justice system and assembling databases. These individuals naturally have relatives, who share genetic material with them. One point not explicitly mooted in the Slate piece: if your relations have become entangled with the criminal justice system, you also are much more likely to be so entangled. I am skeptical that all of the government officials who are assembling these databases are totally ignorant of these behavior genetic findings.
Razib Khan’s degrees are in biochemistry and biology. He has blogged about genetics since 2002, previously worked in software development, is an Unz Foundation Junior Fellow and lives in the western US. He loves habaneros.
June 14th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
Your last sentence is too long. It should be: “All of the government officials who are assembling these databases are totally ignorant.”
June 14th, 2010 at 6:12 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ron Simon, Jeff C. Coleman and CHALCHIHUITES, David Dobbs. David Dobbs said: From @razibkhan The State May Have Your Genome Sooner Than You Think http://j.mp/9xR1Qt Big Bro may be snooping your SNPs [...]
June 15th, 2010 at 9:24 am
“I am skeptical that all of the government officials who are assembling these databases are totally ignorant of these behavior genetic findings.”
They’re not (though they aren’t going to jump to mention that fact).
June 16th, 2010 at 4:39 pm
So IF the state knows that all blue-eyed people share the same mother many generations ago, does that mean that since we are all descendants of possibly up to 5 to 7 “Eves” that we are all guilty by association of “being human?”
Then the other side of it is that maybe we are related to the politicians who are making the laws… that could be scarier than being related to a criminal OR is there a difference?
June 17th, 2010 at 6:59 am
Hi there,
Thanks for pointing us to the Slate piece. I came away with a slightly different take on it, which I expressed (with some hyperventilation) here: (http://mattersoflifeandtech.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/now-big-brother-wants-your-dna-too-psst-it-might-already-have-it/). Cheers.
June 17th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
[...] Genetic Profiling: Get Over It razib khan, over at his new Discover blog site, briefly discusses an article in Slate which mentions familial genetic profiling, and this guy has [...]
June 21st, 2010 at 3:44 am
One more half-baked scientific way to botch up a case for the justice system. They might end up convicting a whole families spread across the globe in every case, that may or maynot include the actual culprit.
NewEnglandBob: The sentence is intended to mean the exact opposite of what you ‘simplify’ it as.