Just a Needle-Stick Away

In New Mexico, communists who fail to register their party affiliation with the state commit a felony. Under New Mexico's DNA databanking law, if they are caught they are required to submit a DNA sample to the department of public safety. In Idaho, consensual sodomy with a partner other than your spouse constitutes a sex-crime felony. Those unfortunate enough to be caught in the act are similarly required by law to submit a tissue sample to the state's DNA databank for the purposes of preventing future sex crimes. And if Governor George Pataki is successful in the next legislative session, New York will begin collecting genetic material from any person convicted of a misdemeanor, such as resisting arrest or disorderly conduct as a result of peaceful civil disobedience.

In an age of biotechnology and computers, we are all but a needle-stick away from disclosing hereditary-disease susceptibilities, familial relationships and identifying information. Anyone who values privacy should therefore be concerned that US law-enforcement agencies are amassing ever larger portions of the general population's DNA while neglecting to implement measures that would protect the privacy and presumptive innocence of citizens. And because DNA evidence is currently enjoying an unprecedented degree of bipartisan enthusiasm, these gradual developments have tended to be sheltered from the criticism that might otherwise confront such policies.

Not that DNA evidence's celebrity isn't well deserved. It is many rape victims' best hope for identifying their assailants and law enforcement's most penetrating method of apprehending serial offenders. It can be credited with triggering a re-examination of the nation's capital punishment system by exonerating eight death-row inmates. Like its predecessor, the fingerprint, DNA profiles are a reliable means of identifying individuals (except in the case of identical twins). But glib analogies to fingerprints obscure important differences. DNA samples can reveal far more information than fingerprints, including sensitive medical conditions, traits or a person's biological parentage. In addition, while fingerprints are unique to every individual, genetic profiles are partially shared among blood relatives. Thus, databanks contain identifying information on nonoffending relatives of people explicitly covered by databanking statutes. Finally, because we shed our genetic calling cards in a trail of hair follicles, skin flecks, saliva aerosols and finger smudges, DNA can also provide a trace of our activities.

Subscriber Login

User Name

Password

Subscribe Now!

The only way to read this article and the full contents of each week's issue of The Nation online is by subscribing to the magazine. Subscribe now and read this article -- and every article published since for the past five years -- right now.

There's no obligation -- try The Nation for four weeks free.

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 68 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.
• Reprint this article. Click here for rights and information.