Running and Triathlon Coach

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Wednesday, July 13, 2011

DNA Fit Up: How You Can Be Found Guilty Using Fake DNA

DNA Fit Up: How You Can Be Found Guilty Using Fake DNA

Foreword by The Ghost of Sir Edward Coke
Our government is obsessed with collecting our DNA for purposes yet to be fully explained. Several questions arise.
Who has access to the data? Will the government lose it or have it stolen? Who might they sell the information to? Perhaps most worrisome of all is it hypothetically possible to frame someone by copying their DNA or fake a person's death?
The answer to the latter may well lie here in this article from the New York Times.
DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show
By ANDREW POLLACK
Published: August 17, 2009
Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases.
The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person.
"You can just engineer a crime scene," said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. "Any biology undergraduate could perform this."
Dr. Frumkin is a founder of Nucleix, a company based in Tel Aviv that has developed a test to distinguish real DNA samples from fake ones that it hopes to sell to forensics laboratories.

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