Foolproof DNA?

News this week that a World War II airman's body was found in the Sierra Nevada Mountains raised several families' hopes that their lost loved ones might have been recovered. Yet little information was found with the unidentified airman; a buffalo nickel, an army uniform, and faded photographs are all investigators have to go by.

Promisingly, DNA technologies might be of assistance. But what's troubling is how some continue to oversell DNA forensics' truth-telling abilities. As an example, one reporter notes that since no identifying information was found with the airman, figuring out who he is "will probably come down to something more modern and foolproof - DNA matching."

Comments such as these are as common as they are disturbing. They reflect an uncritical mysticism that is often associated with anything related to biotechnology, whereby the accuracy of DNA evidence is assumed to be self-evident. But ask Michael R. Bromwich, lead investigator for the Houston Police Department's Crime Lab and Property Room, and you'll see a different side of DNA forensics, albeit from the criminal justice perspective. In reviewing 3,500 cases processed by the department's forensic scientists, Bromwich found

significant and pervasive problems with the analysis and reporting of results in a large proportion of serology and DNA cases. The Crime Lab's substandard, unreliable serology and DNA work is all the more alarming in light of the fact that it is typically performed in the most serious cases, such as homicides and sexual assaults. On the whole, this work did not meet the generally accepted forensic science principles that existed at the time and posed major risks of contributing to miscarriages of justice in extremely significant cases, including death penalty cases.

This 403-page report drives home a point that should be a bigger part of policy debates and reporting regarding genetic technologies: biotechnology, like any other science, is only as reliable as the people that handle it. This isn't to imply that proper handling is the only issue raised by DNA forensics. Rather, it is to suggest that in order for it to be used sensibly, greater oversight is needed to prevent social assumptions regarding forensics' so-called foolproof nature from creating injustice - as it almost surely did for hundreds of Houstonians.