Databases of fingerprints and retina-images might still have a future for specialized applications but DNA-typing (why not on a simple blood sample at birth) combined with a fixed social security number valid for life will probably become a widely used method for governments to control the identity of their serfs. Even without legislation stating compulsory testing of all citizens there are great possibilities with this method. Serologic tests for various reasons (i.e. HIV, rubella in pregnancy etc) are routinely performed on a majority of the population in developed countries. These samples are usually frozen and saved for decades (for the purpose of comparison if the individual should fall ill; and for research if something might get interesting) at most laboratries. DNA- analysis efter thawing is no big deal with modern techniques. So if one is planning to commit hideous crimes in the future, or if one has other reasons to maintain DNA privacy, one should demand that blood samples taken from oneself are destroyed after testing (alternatively take the tests under a pseudonym). Unfortunately there is no known method of encrypting one's DNA code in situ but hopefully they will safely (in escrow?) encrypt it in the databanks. For most purposes a cheapish imprint (sort of a hash function) of an individual's DNA code will suffice, i.e. for secure identification. Longer strains of code will give additional information on the person's genetic dispositions of course (until now only for physical diseases and risk factors but coding relating to schizophrenia and psychopathy are expected Real Soon - the science of molecular biology is in an exponential phase). For such an extended analysis it is, at least for some more years, not enough with a frozen blood sample for serologic testing or a blood/semen-stain from the clothes of a victim but culturable cell-lines are necessary. These observations were provoked by the following forwarded letter: //mb Date: Thu, 09 Jun 94 05:06:29 MST From: mednews (HICNet Medical News) To: hicnews Subject: Course: DNA Databanks and Repositories Message-ID: <iHJNNc7w165w@stat.com> DNA DATABANKS & REPOSITORIES will be presented 4-5 November 1994 at the Sheraton Inn Midway, St Paul Minnesota, USA. SPONSORS: Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and the American Registry of Pathology. GENERAL INFORMATION: AFIP Education Dept. (INT), 14th & Alaska Avenue, NW, Washington, DC, 20306-6000 USA; (301)427-5231; FAX (301)427-5001; or INTERNET: LOWTHER@email.afip.osd.mil CONTENT: DNA typing of biologic tissues and fluids has revolutionized criminalistics. This technology is so powerful that over one half of all states have legislatively mandated the creation of DNA databanks and repositories for law enforcement purposes with other states considerating the same. The passage of the federal DNA Identification Act will bolster the growth of these databanks. DNA repositories also have been established for military remains identification, for scientific human geneic diversity studies, and for numerous public health reasons. This is the third national conference devoted strictly to the establishment of DNA databanks and repositories. This conference is designed to be a practical discussion on the creation and the set-up of DNA databanks/repositories, focusing on forensic identification. It is intended for DNA repository directors, policy makers, and administrators considerating establishment of a DNA collections program, and other interested persons. Lectures will be presented on current state sex offender databanks, the FBI's National DNA Index, the DNA Identification Act, practical aspects of databank setup and administration, and the associated legal and ethical issues. Convictions based on the Minnesota State DNA Database will be featured and a tour of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension's facility will be conducted. (English) COURSE DIRECTOR: Victor W. Weedn, LTC, MC, USC TUITION: $220.
On Mon, 13 Jun 1994, Mats Bergstrom wrote:
Databases of fingerprints and retina-images might still have a future for specialized applications but DNA-typing (why not on a simple blood sample at birth) combined with a fixed social security number valid for life will probably become a widely used method for governments to control the identity of their serfs. Even without legislation stating compulsory
Charles Osgood was also talking in his CBS Sunday Morning lead yesterday about the Infobahn that we will soon all be issued 1 "telephone" number at birth. The Christians are also going on about these control measures because they match the "number of the beast" prophecy. The problem with all of these control fears are that they are based on old technology. THe authorities can try and work with identity control but software agents are people too. Ever since the Trust was invented in England under common law, entities have been created and become "human" actors. (On my "some day" list is an article on Trusts - The First Software Agents.) Likewise corporations. What good does it do to control (some) meat people if each person can spawn a hundred agents (often outside the jurisdiction) which can perfectly legally act on their behalf. I know it will be possible to force these agents to be linked to humans but that would only be at birth. No control is possible over who has the codes to control the software agents of the future. Additionally, all government controls on software agents are dependent upon businesses willingly turning away (unregistered) willing customers. Hard to enforce on the nets. DCF
Duncan Frissell wrote about software agents out of government control:
I know it will be possible to force these agents to be linked to humans but that would only be at birth. No control is possible over who has the codes to control the software agents of the future.
Unless we completely lose the war for privacy and will have to show our retinas to a scanner to be able to access any net (with an identification attached to all our communications) you are right, I hope. But flesh agents need privacy too. Imagine Singapore collecting DNA imprints of all their citizens (and all visitors at custom control) then sweeping the streets for saliva every morning at 3am and whipping the flesh of all offenders. In my country we are all issued a unique software agent at birth i the format: YYMMDDxxxy where y is a check for authenticity (to make it harder faking a number I guess) in the following way: YYMMDDxxx are alternately multiplied by 2 or 1 such as 2xY,1xY,2xX,... A result of 10 or more is treated like 1+0 to get a number not higher than 9. Then all the results are added and the sum is subtracted from the nearest higher power of 10 to get y (if the sum is an even power of 10 you get 10 transforming to 1+0=0). xxx are chosen so as to identify a male by y=even and a female by y=odd (y=0 identifies...eh, I forgot, not a hermaphrodite though). Hope this helps if you would ever like to use a 'personal' agent in this jurisdiction! Take care not to use one which is already occupied since that could cause great trouble for the original holder (or make him rich?). Plenty of clercs have access to some database where this can be checked though, no problem, but I don't know how long it would take for a particular database to find out that your agent has no former history. Disregarding the trivial task of faking another true identity the system is not easy to beat on this level. So I look forward to making my transactions in digicash over a phantom node on the net, through a free anonymous agent. For reasons of privacy. //mb
For those who only look at the first screenful, a place to go for fairly current details on gene sequencing is: Hillis, David M. and Moritz, Craig, eds. 1990. _Molecular Systematics_ Sinauer: Sunderland, MA. The most convenient way of keeping DNA is dried. That, as I understand it, is what the military are trying to do. The idea isn't, yet at least, actually to sequence it. You don't need a sequence for unambiguous identification. The gimmick is RFLP: restriction fragment length polymorphism. You take a DNA sample (in solution) from the unknown: say skeletal remains that might be those of some MIA. You expose that to enzymes that cut DNA in specific locations depending on the DNA base-pair sequence of the strands. These enzymes are called restriction endonucleases -- hence the name of the technique. Depending entirely on the DNA sequence, the sample will get cut in a bunch of places giving a bunch of DNA scraps of various different lengths. You can get chunks of different sizes to separate out by speed of movement through a gel under an electric field. According to preference, you can then use either a stain or radioactive markers to tell where in the gel the DNA fragments are. If the pattern of fragment migration is the same between the known and unknown, you can now fit a name to the bones. But, if the patterns aren't the same, the DNA sequences the restriction enzymes looked for weren't in the same places in the two samples. That means they couldn't have come from the same person. This is a bit of an oversimplification. A lot of human DNA has its restriction sites in the same places you'd find in apes, never mind other humans. Total DNA similarity between humans and chimps is better than 90% overall. Specific zones, called hypervariable sequences, are the only ones really useful for individual ID by DNA. It also works very well for parentage analysis. So you might be able to identify an unknown sample without a previous reference from that person if you could still get samples from that individual's parents. On Mon, 13 Jun 1994, Mats Bergstrom wrote:
countries. These samples are usually frozen and saved for decades (for the purpose of comparison if the individual should fall ill; and for research if something might get interesting) at most laboratries. DNA- analysis efter thawing is no big deal with modern techniques. So if one
The point I got a chuckle out of was the notion of freezing blood samples as a routine thing. To get much use at a molecular level (either DNA or protein structure) out of frozen samples over the long term (more than weeks) you have to keep it at -70C or better. People who study DNA are utterly paranoid about freezer failure. If they leave town, they may leave the cat with an automatic feeder but they need someone to visit the freezer once or twice a day and make sure it's okay. If building power fails (not that uncommon in old university science buildings) you need a generator or a quick load of liquid nitrogen to keep your frozen treasure from being ruined. If drying works, that's what will be used. I don't know, not being in that specialty myself, how good the preservation quality of dry-stored DNA really is. I can easily imagine it being good enough for actual sequencing if it had been quickly freeze-dried and stored under nitrogen instead of air. I'm not sure of that, though, and if preservation isn't perfect sequencing could become a problem without making identification impossible. DNA is terribly sensitive to all kinds of damage, and enzymes already present in the blood or tissue will tear it up given half a chance. Re genomic analysis: yes, it's certainly true that DNA sequencing is doable at the moment on the scales the human genome would require, in the same sense that space flight was doable in the fifties. It's logical to predict that it will only get easier as automatic sequencers get better. The closest tome I happened to grab quotes the length of the human genome at about 2.9 x 10^9 base pairs. The fact that there are four possible bases (2 bits) gives you a 5.8 billion bit storage issue. Not that intractable for storage and analysis, especially given that some compression technques that wouldn't work well for most data would be applicable. James Hicks comments -
"Single Cell" polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is being done in the lab now. Theoretically all you need is one cell and you can amplify any DNA sequence from the genome that you want.
PCR makes tiny sample sizes a lot less of a problem than they used to be, but it has the same problems any extremely sensitive amplifier does. It amplifies everything. If there's the least contamination of the sample with any other DNA, the analyst is in trouble. Suppose you vaccuum a chair. You get some skin from me, some skin from N other people, umpteen dust mites and the foot of a crushed roach. Given the way the enzymes in the dead cells would have torn up the DNA, you may get nothing but if you get anything, the bugs win. Research labs have had terrible trouble with contamination - some PCR amplified "human" DNA in the big databases turns out to look suspiciously like yeast. and //mb adds -
the streets for saliva every morning at 3am and whipping the flesh of all offenders.
Saliva would give the same problem. Nobody's mouth is sterile, and my normal bacterial flora is a lot better protected against the digestive enzymes in saliva than shed cells from my mouth are. Given all that, if anyone is still awake, it's the step *after* all the sequencing that's the biggie... at least for anything beyond simple ID. You've got a sequence: what does it do? A lot of the time, nothing. Lots of animal DNA doesn't ever get used for anything obvious and seems to be along for the ride. You have to distinguish live data from red herrings. Then if you're looking for genetic predictors of disease, you can't just say that *any* change in a particular gene is a red flag -- there's a lot of function-neutral variation. You'd be denying insurance coverage to very safe risks and losing money. But when a change is *not* function-neutral, it may only take one base-pair change. Sickle-cell anemia is produced by just one "typo". What makes it even harder is that most genetic predispositions to disease probably aren't single, consistent, easy to spot changes. A lot of the ones we know about are, but only because those are the ones it's easy to find. Considering that interaction effects really aren't well studied even in pharmacology where they've been known longer (What happens when somebody mixes prozac with alcohol and marijuana? The last time I checked Medline nobody had looked.) I think it will take a long time to sort out problems that have something to do with several genes plus an environmental trigger. The problem may not be big enough to be formally called intractable, in the cryptographic sense, particularly if one makes the customary (sensible) assumptions about processing power increases, but it still looks big enough to be interesting. Sequencing is necessary for some of the 1984ish outcomes predicted, but not sufficient. Conversely you can do a lot of unpleasant discriminatory things to people on the insurance front without knowing their DNA sequence -- Down's Syndrome is extremely obvious and a clear indicator of a bunch of expensive problems not to mention an early death. It looks to me like the issue is worth keeping an eye on, but contagious diseases in the waiting room are still a better justification for avoiding the medical profession than a DNA registry is. regards... -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Dept. of Biology Jennifer Mansfield-Jones University of Michigan cardtris@umich.edu
participants (3)
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Duncan Frissell -
Jennifer Mansfield-Jones -
Mats Bergstrom