The Future
The recent Crime Bill takes heed of many of the NRC recommendations in the "DNA Identification Act of 1994." The Crime Bill authorizes grants (part of a $20 million package through facial year 2000) to public laboratories that apply and meet quality standards for forensic testing.
Another effect of the Crime Bill will be the establishment of a DNA index of the records of persons convicted of crimes, analyses of samples from crime scenes and from unidentified human remains. Currently, a national DNA identification index, the Combined Identification Index System (CODIS), is being developed by the FBI with participation from 10 states.
The index will be particularly helpful in catching repeat offenders, Ferrara said.
But Sensabaugh cautions that a DNA database of all individuals might not be a wise idea. He worries that the database could be used for new forms of genetic discrimination. "I don't want one, and you probably don't either," Sensabaugh says.
DNA profiling is the technique used to determine predispositions for cancer, Down's Syndrome and a variety of other diseases. But Bloom doesn't foresee this type of a database in the near future.
"The loci of medical interest are where the DNA should be the same between everyone, only changing with disease," Bloom says. "Police are looking for the ones that change like mad, the parts that are known as 'junk DNA' by most scientists. The other part of the answer is that it's not cost effective to do millions of tests."
In fact, for paternity cases, Baird says that LifeCodes, a Stamford, Conn. lab, charges $200 per sample and $535 for forensic DNA analysis including RFLP, PCR, or both.
Kaye says that there is a big impact on the number of guilty pleas with DNA profiling. Also, Bloom says, "Eyewitnesses are not accurate. Eyewitnesses have testified that a given individual was the criminal and DNA tests have proven that individual could not have been the perpetrator."
But Ferrara cautions that DNA profiling is not the only method that should be used to convict criminals.
"DNA evidence should not be looked at in isolation," Ferrara says. "It should be looked at with means, mode, motive and opportunity. DNA adds useful incriminating evidence."
"DNA testing alone is not meant to resolve innocence or guilt," Stolorow says. "It is the litigants job to prove that to a judge and jury."
Similarly, "lawyers understand that here is a remote possibility that some other gun fired a bullet," Bloom says. "But that realization doesn't stop them from using the ballistics report."
Bloom says that regardless of the accuracy of DNA profiling, lawyers will always be able to dispute it.
"Errors lead to mistakes," Bloom says. "Manipulation and the chain-of-custody can get fouled up along the way."
But Koshland has come up with effective alternatives to even that problem. "It may soon be possible to put a DNA sample in an automated machine with both defense and prosecution acting as witnesses to the procedure," he writes in his Science editorial.
"The real question is, aside from all other evidence, what is a good enough probability to convince a jury on just a DNA profile," Ferrara says. "If I thought that the chance of it being someone else was one in a million, I could live with it."
Sensabaugh does not, however, foreser DNA profiling becoming the method of choice for identification. "I don't see a point where genetic identification will become more common that fingerprints," Sensabaugh said.
Next month, many of the questions still surrounding DNA profiling will be addressed when the second NRC committee meets for three days to discuss their new report. "There will be a public meeting, for at least a day, where a large number of people will come and speak," says Crow. The second report, "DNA Technology in Forensic Science: An Update," is expected to be finished by next summer.
"There is an irony in this new acceptance of DNA fingerprinting," Koshland says in his editorial. "Ink fingerprinting went through the same type of debate, with questions about whether more than one person could have the same print, whether there could be abuse by police, whether there would be care in sample taking, and so on."