Genetic Witness

Genetic Witness PDF Author: Jay Aronson
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813543835
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
When DNA profiling was first introduced into the American legal system in 1987, it was heralded as a technology that would revolutionize law enforcement. As an investigative tool, it has lived up to much of this hype—it is regularly used to track down unknown criminals, put murderers and rapists behind bars, and exonerate the innocent. Yet, this promise took ten turbulent years to be fulfilled. In Genetic Witness, Jay D. Aronson uncovers the dramatic early history of DNA profiling that has been obscured by the technique’s recent success. He demonstrates that robust quality control and quality assurance measures were initially nonexistent, interpretation of test results was based more on assumption than empirical evidence, and the technique was susceptible to error at every stage. Most of these issues came to light only through defense challenges to what prosecutors claimed to be an infallible technology. Although this process was fraught with controversy, inefficiency, and personal antagonism, the quality of DNA evidence improved dramatically as a result. Aronson argues, however, that the dream of a perfect identification technology remains unrealized.

Genetic Witness

Genetic Witness PDF Author: Jay Aronson
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813543835
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
When DNA profiling was first introduced into the American legal system in 1987, it was heralded as a technology that would revolutionize law enforcement. As an investigative tool, it has lived up to much of this hype—it is regularly used to track down unknown criminals, put murderers and rapists behind bars, and exonerate the innocent. Yet, this promise took ten turbulent years to be fulfilled. In Genetic Witness, Jay D. Aronson uncovers the dramatic early history of DNA profiling that has been obscured by the technique’s recent success. He demonstrates that robust quality control and quality assurance measures were initially nonexistent, interpretation of test results was based more on assumption than empirical evidence, and the technique was susceptible to error at every stage. Most of these issues came to light only through defense challenges to what prosecutors claimed to be an infallible technology. Although this process was fraught with controversy, inefficiency, and personal antagonism, the quality of DNA evidence improved dramatically as a result. Aronson argues, however, that the dream of a perfect identification technology remains unrealized.

Genetic Witness

Genetic Witness PDF Author: United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Criminal investigation
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description


Genetic witness : forensic uses of DNA tests

Genetic witness : forensic uses of DNA tests PDF Author:
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1428921893
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description


DNA Technology in Forensic Science

DNA Technology in Forensic Science PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309045878
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
Matching DNA samples from crime scenes and suspects is rapidly becoming a key source of evidence for use in our justice system. DNA Technology in Forensic Science offers recommendations for resolving crucial questions that are emerging as DNA typing becomes more widespread. The volume addresses key issues: Quality and reliability in DNA typing, including the introduction of new technologies, problems of standardization, and approaches to certification. DNA typing in the courtroom, including issues of population genetics, levels of understanding among judges and juries, and admissibility. Societal issues, such as privacy of DNA data, storage of samples and data, and the rights of defendants to quality testing technology. Combining this original volume with the new update-The Evaluation of Forensic DNA Evidence-provides the complete, up-to-date picture of this highly important and visible topic. This volume offers important guidance to anyone working with this emerging law enforcement tool: policymakers, specialists in criminal law, forensic scientists, geneticists, researchers, faculty, and students.

The Evaluation of Forensic DNA Evidence

The Evaluation of Forensic DNA Evidence PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309134404
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
In 1992 the National Research Council issued DNA Technology in Forensic Science, a book that documented the state of the art in this emerging field. Recently, this volume was brought to worldwide attention in the murder trial of celebrity O. J. Simpson. The Evaluation of Forensic DNA Evidence reports on developments in population genetics and statistics since the original volume was published. The committee comments on statements in the original book that proved controversial or that have been misapplied in the courts. This volume offers recommendations for handling DNA samples, performing calculations, and other aspects of using DNA as a forensic toolâ€"modifying some recommendations presented in the 1992 volume. The update addresses two major areas: Determination of DNA profiles. The committee considers how laboratory errors (particularly false matches) can arise, how errors might be reduced, and how to take into account the fact that the error rate can never be reduced to zero. Interpretation of a finding that the DNA profile of a suspect or victim matches the evidence DNA. The committee addresses controversies in population genetics, exploring the problems that arise from the mixture of groups and subgroups in the American population and how this substructure can be accounted for in calculating frequencies. This volume examines statistical issues in interpreting frequencies as probabilities, including adjustments when a suspect is found through a database search. The committee includes a detailed discussion of what its recommendations would mean in the courtroom, with numerous case citations. By resolving several remaining issues in the evaluation of this increasingly important area of forensic evidence, this technical update will be important to forensic scientists and population geneticistsâ€"and helpful to attorneys, judges, and others who need to understand DNA and the law. Anyone working in laboratories and in the courts or anyone studying this issue should own this book.

The Forever Witness

The Forever Witness PDF Author: Edward Humes
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1524746274
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
“Thought-provoking true-crime thriller…the book raises urgent questions of balancing public and private good that we’ll likely be dealing with as long as the title implies.”—Wall Street Journal A relentless detective and a civilian genealogist solve a haunting cold case—and launch a crime-fighting revolution that tests the fragile line between justice and privacy. In November 1987, a young couple from the idyllic suburbs of Vancouver Island on an overnight trip to Seattle vanished without a trace. A week later, the bodies of Tanya Van Cuylenborg and her boyfriend Jay Cook were found in rural Washington. It was a brutal crime, and it was the perfect crime: With few clues and no witnesses in the vast and foreboding Olympic Peninsula, an international manhunt turned up empty, and the sensational case that shocked the Pacific Northwest gradually slipped from the headlines. In deep-freeze, long-term storage, biological evidence from the crime sat waiting, as Detective Jim Scharf poured over old case files looking for clues his predecessors missed. Meanwhile, 1,200 miles away in California, CeCe Moore began her lifelong fascination with genetic genealogy, a powerful forensic tool that emerged not from the crime lab, but through the wildly popular home DNA ancestry tests purchased by more than 40 million Americans. When Scharf decided to send the cold case’s decades-old DNA to Parabon NanoLabs, he hoped he would finally bring closure to the Van Cuylenborg and Cook families. He didn’t know that he and Moore would make history. Genetic genealogy, long the province of family tree hobbyists and adoptees seeking their birth families, has made headlines as a cold case solution machine, capable of exposing the darkest secrets of seemingly upstanding citizens. In the hands of a tenacious detective like Scharf, genetic genealogy has solved one baffling killing after another. But as this crime-fighting technique spreads, its sheer power has sparked a national debate: Can we use DNA to catch the murderers among us, yet still protect our last shred of privacy in the digital age—the right to the very blueprint of who we are?

Genetic Witness

Genetic Witness PDF Author: Chuck Rahi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780887393129
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
During the Cold War, a Secret Service agent is murdered and atomic bomb blueprints are stolen. Intent on solving the crime, FBI agent Ben Connars soon finds himself trapped in an old obsession that almost destroyed his life. When Ben's struggle to cope with it intersects with the phenomenon of genetic memory, his drivenness takes on new force. He puts everything at risk, including the life of a young boy whose genetic recall of his murdered grandfather's memories could lead Ben to the killer.

The Century of the Gene

The Century of the Gene PDF Author: Evelyn Fox KELLER
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674039432
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
In a book that promises to change the way we think and talk about genes and genetic determinism, Evelyn Fox Keller, one of our most gifted historians and philosophers of science, provides a powerful, profound analysis of the achievements of genetics and molecular biology in the twentieth century, the century of the gene. Not just a chronicle of biology’s progress from gene to genome in one hundred years, The Century of the Gene also calls our attention to the surprising ways these advances challenge the familiar picture of the gene most of us still entertain. Keller shows us that the very successes that have stirred our imagination have also radically undermined the primacy of the gene—word and object—as the core explanatory concept of heredity and development. She argues that we need a new vocabulary that includes concepts such as robustness, fidelity, and evolvability. But more than a new vocabulary, a new awareness is absolutely crucial: that understanding the components of a system (be they individual genes, proteins, or even molecules) may tell us little about the interactions among these components. With the Human Genome Project nearing its first and most publicized goal, biologists are coming to realize that they have reached not the end of biology but the beginning of a new era. Indeed, Keller predicts that in the new century we will witness another Cambrian era, this time in new forms of biological thought rather than in new forms of biological life.

Assessing Genetic Risks

Assessing Genetic Risks PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309047986
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Raising hopes for disease treatment and prevention, but also the specter of discrimination and "designer genes," genetic testing is potentially one of the most socially explosive developments of our time. This book presents a current assessment of this rapidly evolving field, offering principles for actions and research and recommendations on key issues in genetic testing and screening. Advantages of early genetic knowledge are balanced with issues associated with such knowledge: availability of treatment, privacy and discrimination, personal decision-making, public health objectives, cost, and more. Among the important issues covered: Quality control in genetic testing. Appropriate roles for public agencies, private health practitioners, and laboratories. Value-neutral education and counseling for persons considering testing. Use of test results in insurance, employment, and other settings.

Evolution's Witness

Evolution's Witness PDF Author: Ivan R. Schwab
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195369742
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
"The evolution of the eye spans 3.75 billion years from single cell organisms with eyespots to Metazoa with superb camera style eyes. At least ten different ocular models have evolved independently into myriad optical and physiological masterpieces. The story of the eye reveals evolution's greatest triumph and sweetest gift. This book describes its journey"--Provided by publisher.