Sat, 17 Oct 2009

Some recent DNA-related news

The UK Border Agency announced its Human Provenance Project 'to help identify a person’s true country of origin' from their DNA. This racist scheme, confusing ethnicity and nationality, has been rubbished by scientists finding it 'flawed', 'naive' and 'horrifying'. The UKBA appeared to have second thoughts but is still going ahead with it.

• Science Magazine published reactions by scientists here, here, here, a FAQ and an apparent policy change.
• Nature published an editorial describing the scheme as 'scientifically flawed, ethically dubious and potentially damaging to science'. (Another editorial in the same issue calls for further regulation of genetic-testing companies.)
• Action on Rights for Children tracked the evolution of the scheme by the UKBA from its announcement, to its very temporary suspension, to the present instructions.
• The Register reported on a very similar scheme two years ago. At the time, Lord Triesman was describing the effort: 'In my role as the PM's Special Envoy for Returns, I have been giving a new focus to this work [returning illegal immigrants] by exploring the scientific and technical options to remove the barriers to removal. With others, we are looking at the scientific and technical identification of nationality. This will be an important tool in a series of measures to improve the redocumentation and return of immigration offenders.'

In a BBC interview, Professor Gloria Laycock, the director of the Jill Dando Institute, distanced herself from the research included in the Home Office consultation: '[The Home Office] policy should be based on proper analysis and evidence and we did our best to try and produce some in a terribly tiny timeframe, using data we were not given direct access to. That was probably a mistake with hindsight, we should have just said "you might as well just stick your finger in the air and think of a number".'

The first 'DNA clinic' organised by Liberty with Diane Abbott MP happened at the end of September. Anna Fairclough recounts how it went. She found 'that many people are profoundly disturbed by the government's determination to retain their DNA when they have not been convicted of a crime. The demand was such that we could probably fill DNA clinics around the country if we had sufficient resources to staff them.' The racial bias of the NDNAD was reflected in the attendance, 'it was no surprise that we had a clinic full of young black men and boys, smart in their school blazers and flanked by worried parents'.

The United Arab Emirates intend to add the DNA profiles of all UAE residents to its DNA database. Dr Ahmed al Marzooqi, the director of the UAE National DNA Database, said 'The aim is to eventually have a profile of the entire population. Our goal is to sample one million per year, which could take as long as 10 years if you factor in the population growth.'

Techno utopians with a Jesus phone and no concern for privacy can waste their money on an iPhone wallpaper of their DNA profile. Those with an Android phone, can look forward to an application to assess products, when shopping, for compatibility with their genome.

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