DNA Tech: A Not So Perfect Match
A 60 Minutes article, via CBS News, reports that:
There's a new saying in law enforcement circles these days: don't do the crime if your brother's doing time. And the reason for that is the power of DNA.More here.
As 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl reports, every state in this country collects DNA from convicted felons and loads it into computer databases, all linked together by the FBI. When detectives find DNA at a crime scene, they run it through that database looking for a perfect match. You see this on crime shows all the time.
But sometimes a search yields a not so perfect match – a partial match, in which case it's clear that the felon in the database did not commit the crime. But the DNA is so similar, maybe their father, mother, or brother did.
Which raises a dilemma: should police start investigating those family members, or is that going too far?
posted by Fergie @ 4/01/2007 05:21:00 PM
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