A New DNA Test Can ID a Suspect's Race, But Police Won't Touch It

[Errigal]

A New DNA Test Can ID a Suspect's Race, But Police Won't Touch It

By Melba Newsome
12.20.07 | 6:00 PM

In the summer of 2002, the FBI, the Baton Rouge Police Department, and several other agencies began a massive search for a serial killer suspected of murdering three women. Based on an FBI profile and an eyewitness report, they upended southern Louisiana looking for a white man who drives a white pickup, collecting DNA from more than 1,000 Caucasian males. They found nothing. Meanwhile, the killer struck again.

In March 2003, investigators turned to Tony Frudakis, a molecular biologist who said he could determine the suspect's race by analyzing his DNA. Uncertain about the science, the police asked Frudakis to take a blind test: They sent him DNA swabs from 20 people to see if he could identify their races. He nailed every one.

On a conference call a few weeks later, Frudakis reported his results on their killer. "Your guy could be African-American or Afro-Caribbean, but there is no chance that this is a Caucasian." There was a prolonged silence, followed by a flurry of questions. They all came down to this: Would Frudakis bet his life on his results? Absolutely.

Quickly changing course, the authorities soon turned up the file of Derrick Todd Lee, a 34-year-old black man with an extensive rap sheet for domestic violence, assault, stalking, and peeping. The police got a subpoena, took a cheek swab, and a few days later had an answer: Lee's sample matched DNA collected at the crime scenes.

Frudakis' test is called DNAWitness. It examines DNA from 176 locations along the genome. Particular sequences at these points are found primarily in people of African heritage, others mainly in people of Indo-European, Native American, or South Asian descent. No one sequence can perfectly identify a person's origin. But by looking at scores of markers, Frudakis says he can predict ancestry with a tiny margin of error.

Since the Baton Rouge case, DNAWitness has been used nationally in nearly 200 criminal investigations. In several, the science played a crucial role in narrowing the suspect field, ultimately leading to an arrest. But its success hasn't made the technology popular with law enforcement. Frudakis' company, DNAPrint, has yet to turn a profit and may not survive much longer.

Part of the problem is cost — basic tests run more than $1,000. But the real issue? DNAWitness touches on race and racial profiling — a subject with such a tortured history that people can't countenance the existence of the technology, even if they don't understand how it works.

"Once we start talking about predicting racial background from genetics, it's not much of a leap to talking about how people perform based on their DNA — why they committed that rape or stole that car or scored higher on that IQ test," says Troy Duster, former president of the American Sociological Association.

"This is analyzing data derived from a crime scene," Frudakis counters. "It's just a way for police to narrow down their suspect lists." But his position, rational as it may be, is no match for the emotions that surface with any pairing of race and crime.

Tony Clayton, a black man and a prosecutor who tried one of the Baton Rouge murder cases, concedes the benefits of the test: "Had it not been for Frudakis, we would still be looking for the white guy in the white pickup." Nevertheless, Clayton says he dislikes anything that implies we don't all "bleed the same blood." He adds, "If I could push a button and make this technology disappear, I would."

A New DNA Test Can ID a Suspect\'s Race, But Police Won\'t Touch It

[Señor Malo]

Originally Posted by Errigal

A New DNA Test Can ID a Suspect\'s Race, But Police Won\'t Touch It

The audience looked pretty shovcked when they herd that the murdered in this case could be but of african lineage. What's the problem? they should just relax; the result said that in this precise case the suspect was for sure Afro, it did not actually say that all murderers are afroes. is there a kind a taboo at suspecting an afro from a crime or what?

[Kernunnos]

Originally Posted by Truth-Finder

The audience looked pretty shovcked when they herd that the murdered in this case could be but of african lineage. What's the problem? they should just relax; the result said that in this precise case the suspect was for sure Afro, it did not actually say that all murderers are afroes. is there a kind a taboo at suspecting an afro from a crime or what?

This discovery goes against the common , sacred belief that race doesn't exist. If this tenet crumbles (again) under the hits of the advancing genetic science, politics could be also affected. The left dominates in universities, and it is fundamental for them to say that race is a social construct. Any scientific demonstration that this is untrue is too hard to bear for their power position. In fact, the left mantains that men are all born equal, it is poverty and inequality that makes them unequal. Rediscovering racial differences could lead to the rediscovery of the fact that men are not born equal, but with different characteristics. So this would shake the very basic philosophy lying under leftism, from Jean Jacques Russeau onward.

[Amorsite]

Originally Posted by Truth-Finder

The audience looked pretty shovcked when they herd that the murdered in this case could be but of african lineage. What's the problem? they should just relax; the result said that in this precise case the suspect was for sure Afro, it did not actually say that all murderers are afroes. is there a kind a taboo at suspecting an afro from a crime or what?

negroes always have to be the nice oppressed guys, like in the movies... Otherwise reality can be suspect of being "racist" in which case it must be denied at all costs.

[Errigal]

Originally Posted by Breha

This discovery goes against the common , sacred belief that race doesn't exist. If this tenet crumbles (again) under the hits of the advancing genetic science, politics could be also affected. The left dominates in universities, and it is fundamental for them to say that race is a social construct. Any scientific demonstration that this is untrue is too hard to bear for their power position. In fact, the left mantains that men are all born equal, it is poverty and inequality that makes them unequal. Rediscovering racial differences could lead to the rediscovery of the fact that men are not born equal, but with different characteristics. So this would shake the very basic philosophy lying under leftism, from Jean Jacques Russeau onward.

To me it seems like a kind of secular mysticism. They seem to think they can change reality by the power of their own thoughts. In other words, if we all pretend something is true, it becomes true.

[Kernunnos]

Originally Posted by Errigal

To me it seems like a kind of secular mysticism. They seem to think they can change reality by the power of their own thoughts. In other words, if we all pretend something is true, it becomes true.

The left has its own mysticism, no doubt that its tenets are considered by most of its adherents as lay religion.

And they defend their position with the strength and blindness of believers.

They pretend to be scientifically approaching reality. They instead use science as long as it supports their philosophical claims, that are mostly un-scientific, as it was a dilettante the ext carpenter turned philosopher Rousseau.


As for stet religions, it is not only a question of beliefs, it is a question of power they keep in a society that is based on their ideological framework.

If this framework is questioned seriously by science, they go berserk.

[Errigal]

I was thinking recently of this secular political mysticism because of a recent post by Marulus:

Egregor

Egregore (also "egregor") is an occult concept representing a "thought form" or "collective group mind", an autonomous psychic entity made up of, and influencing, the thoughts of a group of people. The symbiotic relationship between an egregore and its group has been compared to the more recent, non-occult concepts of the corporation (as a legal entity) and the meme.

Egregore - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia