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| Full article title | How could the ethical management of health data in the medical field inform police use of DNA? |
|---|---|
| Journal | Frontiers in Public Health |
| Author(s) | Krikorian, Gaelle; Vailly, Joëlle |
| Author affiliation(s) | Institut de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les enjeux sociaux (IRIS) |
| Primary contact | Email: gaelle.krikorian@gmail.com |
| Editors | Lefèvre, Thomas |
| Year published | 2018 |
| Volume and issue | 6 |
| Page(s) | 154 |
| DOI | 10.3389/fpubh.2018.00154 |
| ISSN | 2296-2565 |
| Distribution license | Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International |
| Website | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2018.00154/full |
| Download | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2018.00154/pdf (PDF) |
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Introduction
Various events paved the way for the production of ethical norms regulating biomedical practices, from the Nuremberg Code (1947)—produced by the international trial of Nazi regime leaders and collaborators—and the Declaration of Helsinki by the World Medical Association (1964) to the invention of the term “bioethics” by American biologist Van Rensselaer Potter.[1] The ethics of biomedicine has given rise to various controversies—particularly in the fields of newborn screening[2], prenatal screening[3], and cloning[4]—resulting in the institutionalization of ethical questions in the biomedical world of genetics. In 1994, France passed legislation (commonly known as the “bioethics laws”) to regulate medical practices in genetics. The medical community has also organized itself in order to manage ethical issues relating to its decisions, with a view to handling “practices with many strong uncertainties” and enabling clinical judgments and decisions to be made not by individual practitioners but rather by multidisciplinary groups drawing on different modes of judgment and forms of expertise.[5] Thus, the biomedical approach to genetics has been characterized by various debates and the existence of public controversies.
In the judicial sphere, the situation is very different. Since the end of the 1990s, developments in biomedical research have led to genetic data being used in police work and legal proceedings. Today, forensic science is omnipresent in investigations, not just in complex criminal cases but also routinely in cases of “minor” or “mass” delinquency. Genetics, which certainly receives the most media coverage among the techniques involved[6], has taken on considerable importance.[7] However, although very similar techniques are used in biomedicine and police work (DNA amplification, sequencing, etc.), the forms of collective management surrounding them are very different, as well as the ethico-legal frameworks and their evolution, as this text will demonstrate.
Keywords: DNA, police, ethics, genetic technologies, criminal investigations
Nature of the information and genetic data produced in the police sphere
In police work in France, data produced by DNA are currently compiled and used in two different ways: first, to create files on individuals in the FNAEG or Fichier national automatisé des empreintes génétiques (national automated DNA database) and, second, in order to obtain information about perpetrators of crimes (their appearance, their origin, their kinship links to other individuals).
Police use of DNA has been allowed in France since the 1998 law providing for the creation of the FNAEG. A DNA profile corresponds to a “specific individual alphanumeric combination”[8] that is the numerical encoding of analysis of DNA segments. This profile is the result of analysis of DNA fragments using genetic markers. This analysis can be carried out on a minute amount of genetic material (saliva, blood, sperm, hair, contact, etc.). It identifies the presence of sequences specific to an individual that differentiate them from any other person (with the exception of an identical twin) but that are not supposed to provide any phenotypical information (about appearance, geographical origin, or diseases).[a] Such profiles therefore make individuals “identifiable in their uniqueness.”[9] During investigations, DNA is collected from suspects or unidentified stains left on crime scenes or people and the results of this analysis are entered into the database. Identification through the FNAEG was originally restricted to a limited number of crimes—those of a sexual nature, as part of the law relating to the prevention and punishment of sexual crimes and the protection of minors. This remit has progressively been extended to include the vast majority of crimes and offences[b], leading to the routine use of DNA in investigations.[c] As a result of this evolution, there has been a substantial increase in the number of persons with files in the FNAEG, more than three million as of late 2015.[d]
New techniques have also emerged in recent years. It is now possible to obtain indications about an individual's physical appearance based on a sample of his/her DNA[10][11]: the analyses in question provide statistical information on eye, hair, and skin color, etc. These techniques are more exploratory and aim not to match DNA with an identity by comparison but to determine the characteristics of the perpetrator of a crime. These data result from analysis of several dozen DNA markers that, unlike the FNAEG's data, are selected deliberately so that they can provide information about a person's physical appearance. They are therefore aimed at “generating a suspect”[12] but because the information about this person's features are incomplete (e.g., a person with blue eyes, fair skin, light brown hair, and of European “bio-geographical” ancestry), they define “target populations of interest” to guide police investigations.[13] Several private and public laboratories in France now produce what professionals often refer to as “DNA photofits”; it is estimated that several dozen such analyses have been carried out since 2014 as part of investigations.
Footnotes
- ↑ The Order of 10 August 2015 increased the number of markers analyzed to 21; policemen and analysis laboratories had three years to comply with this new requirement.
- ↑ Act n°98-468 of 17 June 1998 relative to the punishment of sexual crimes and the protection of minors introduced article 706-54 into the Code of Criminal Procedure making provision for the creation of an automated national database to centralize the DNA profiles of persons convicted of offences of a sexual nature. The remit of the database was then extended on several occasions. In 2001, it included serious crimes against persons. In 2003, the law on internal security extended it to persons convicted of or implicated in crimes and offences against persons or property.
- ↑ Collecting DNA samples in investigations is now the rule. An ad hoc body of staff has been trained over the past 15 years that almost systematically processes crime scenes.
- ↑ This figure was provided to the French Parliament by the Ministry of the Interior following a question by parliamentarian Sergio Coronado (member of the “Ecologist” parliamentary group) (http://questions.assemblee-nationale.fr/q14/14-79728QE.htm).
References
- ↑ Potter, V.R. (1970). "Bioethics, the science of survival". Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 14 (1): 127–53. doi:10.1353/pbm.1970.0015.
- ↑ Vailly, J. (2013). The Birth of a Genetics Policy: Social Issues of Newborn Screening. Routledge. pp. 240. ISBN 9781472422729.
- ↑ Isambert, F.A. (1980). "Éthique et génétique: De l'utopie eugénique au contrôle des malformations congénitales". Revue française de sociologie 21 (3): 331–54. doi:10.2307/3320930.
- ↑ Pulman, B. (2005). "Les enjeux du clonage". Revue française de sociologie 46 (3): 413–42. doi:10.3917/rfs.463.0413.
- ↑ Bourret, P.; Rabeharisoa, V. (2008). "Décision et jugement médicaux en situation de forte incertitude : l’exemple de deux pratiques cliniques à l’épreuve de la génétique". Sciences sociales et santé 26 (1): 128. doi:10.3917/sss.261.0033.
- ↑ Brewer, P.R.; Ley, B.L. (2009). "Media Use and Public Perceptions of DNA Evidence". Science Communication 32 (1): 93–117. doi:10.1177/1075547009340343.
- ↑ Williams, R.; Johnson, P. (2008). Genetic Policing: The Uses of DNA in Police Investigations. Willan. pp. 208. ISBN 9781843922049.
- ↑ Cabal, C.; Le Déaut, J.-Y.; Revol, H. (2001). Rapport sur la valeur scientifique de l'utilisation des empreintes génétiques dans le domaine judiciaire. Assemblée nationale. ISBN 2111150177.
- ↑ Bonniol, J.-L.; Darlu, P. (2014). "L’ADN au service d’une nouvelle quête des ancêtres?". Civilisations 63: 201–19. doi:10.4000/civilisations.3747.
- ↑ Kayser, M.; de Knijff, P. (2011). "Improving human forensics through advances in genetics, genomics and molecular biology". Nature Reviews Genetics 12 (3): 179–92. doi:10.1038/nrg2952. PMID 21331090.
- ↑ Kayser, M. (2015). "Forensic DNA Phenotyping: Predicting human appearance from crime scene material for investigative purposes". Forensic Science International Genetics 18: 33–48. doi:10.1016/j.fsigen.2015.02.003. PMID 25716572.
- ↑ M'charek, A. (2013). "Beyond Fact or Fiction: On the Materiality of Race in Practice". Cultural Anthropology 28 (3): 420–42. doi:10.1111/cuan.12012.
- ↑ Caliebe, A.; Krawczak, M.; Kayser, M. (2018). "Predictive values in Forensic DNA Phenotyping are not necessarily prevalence-dependent". FSI Genetics 33: e7–e8. doi:10.1016/j.fsigen.2017.11.006.
Notes
This presentation is faithful to the original, with only a few minor changes to presentation. In some cases important information was missing from the references, and that information was added. Footnotes were originally numbered but have been converted to lowercase alpha for this version.
