Instant DNA fingerprinting with the push of a button

Posted by Doug Pet March 3, 2011
Biopolitical Times

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans this summer to begin testing a device that would make DNA analysis cheaper, faster and easier. The machines, priced at around $275,000 apiece, would cut the cost of an individual DNA test from $500 down to under $100, and would cut processing time from days or weeks down to about an hour. Some are calling the new, laser-printer-sized, DNA analyzer a potential "game-changer" as it would make DNA fingerprinting much more common, expanding its applications-security, medical, or otherwise-into the mainstream and enabling those with no technical or scientific expertise to perform it.

Ostensibly, DHS's short-term goals for rapid DNA testing technology are to quickly determine kinship among foreign refugees, their children, relatives and/or other asylum seekers, as well as to reduce the incidence of human trafficking associated with fraudulent foreign adoptions.

Once the technology is commercialized, however, there seems to be no doubt that applications will expand, and greatly so. NetBio, the Boston-based company developing the machine for DHS, says that its easy-to-use machines are designed not only for homeland security, but also for military, intelligence and police agencies. Christopher Miles, biometrics program manager at DHS's Department of Science and Technology, said also that the rapid sequencers could eventually be used to identify undocumented immigrants, criminals, missing persons, or mass casualty victims.

The prospect of widespread DNA testing raises myriad questions around privacy and civil liberties. Miles notes that, in order to avoid such complications, tests meant to identify people will avoid analyzing genetic loci that could reveal medical problems. Information about kinship, however, and paternity especially, would undoubtedly be revealed by these tests, and would carry serious implications, possibly affecting the safety and social well-being of mothers [pdf] and children. Lowering the bar at which a person's DNA can be collected maps onto another area of critical concern regarding if and how samples are stored, how they can be used in the future, and who will have access to them.

As security-related DNA testing becomes more and more common, what was perhaps intended as a strictly bounded high-level security measure could turn into a means for widespread DNA screening for criminal records or other security-"threatening" genetic profiles. Looking at the alarming speed with which DNA databases and forensic applications are expanding internationally [1, 2, 3], such a thought is far from unrealistic.

Previously in Biopolitical Times: