{"id":29553,"date":"2018-10-26T11:08:09","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T05:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=29553"},"modified":"2018-10-26T11:08:09","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T05:38:09","slug":"the-problems-with-a-dna-registrythe-hindu-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/the-problems-with-a-dna-registrythe-hindu-opinion\/","title":{"rendered":"The problems with a DNA registry(The Hindu Opinion)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/todays-paper\/tp-opinion\/the-problems-with-a-dna-registry\/article23807298.ece\">The problems with a DNA registry<\/a>(The Hindu Opinion)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Context<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Building such a database is not easy, does not always offer justice, and is an ethical landmine<\/p>\n<p><strong>What has happened?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>According to the National Crime Records Bureau, only about a quarter of rape cases ended in conviction in 2016. These rates are low in other countries too. The outrage over these attacks has reinforced the belief that India needs a sex offenders\u2019 database or a DNA database of those accused and charged with rape.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Concerns regarding using DNA profiling<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Civil liberties and rights<\/strong>: Protecting innocent people\u2019s privacy and their civil liberties and rights are the main concerns e.g. the police sometimes may use DNA dragnets whereby all the people in a community are persuaded to give their saliva or blood in order to identify a possible suspect amongst them. Such samples later get included in forensic DNA databanks, thus violating people\u2019s civil liberties.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Planting of DNA:<\/strong> Planting of DNA in a crime scene, misinterpretation of tests, and errors in analyses<\/li>\n<li><strong>Phantom DNA:<\/strong> Everybody leaves traces of DNA in numerous places, as cells are shed, leading to ridiculous mistakes such as the Phantom of Heilbronn (when the German police admitted that a woman they were searching for more than 15 years based on DNA traces at crime scenes never in fact existed)<\/li>\n<li><strong>DNA data mining<\/strong>: Dangers of misuse as how our digital data is being used by Data mining companies today<\/li>\n<li><strong>Targeting of particular groups<\/strong>: Targeting of particular communities, groups based on race, ethnicity or color etc.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Unethical ways of DNA collection: <\/strong>In a number of cases, the police may follow persons they suspect and then gather their DNA secretly (for example, by taking a bottle or cup they were drinking from) and without warrants. Collecting this so-called \u201cabandoned DNA\u201d has been challenged as being clearly unethical and unlawful.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Police bias towards minorities: <\/strong>Law enforcement is responsible for gathering DNA for forensics, and police bias towards minorities leads to the latter\u2019s over-representation in the DNA databanks<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Chance of False positive increases with number<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Experience with the U.K. and U.S. databanks has shown that having more innocent people\u2019s DNA stored increases the chances of a false positive and has not increased the chances of finding a guilty match<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Amidst these concerns then the question arises: How can DNA information be used in a way that respects the rights of people and their privacy?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It is absolutely essential that the people from whom DNA is taken give their informed consent; taking DNA surreptitiously should be prohibited<\/li>\n<li>A court order should be required for obtaining DNA without informed consent and the DNA should only be compared with the crime scene DNA for the suspect<\/li>\n<li>Those who are cleared for a crime should not have their DNA information stored, and DNA gathered from offenders should be destroyed after identification so that such information is not used for profiling in future<\/li>\n<li>A court order should be necessary to access medical records for genetic data.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The problems with a DNA registry(The Hindu Opinion) Context Building such a database is not easy, does not always offer justice, and is an ethical landmine What has happened? According to the National Crime Records Bureau, only about a quarter of rape cases ended in conviction in 2016. These rates are low in other countries&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/the-problems-with-a-dna-registrythe-hindu-opinion\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The problems with a DNA registry(The Hindu Opinion)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704768440},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}