dna databases?

[jayalphatech]

http://www.chronicleonline.com/content/tips-sought-old-murder

I read this article and was left with some serious questions…

Man disappears in 1974, and thirty years later, his DNA is pulled from a missing persons DNA database and used to ID his body. There is no mention of where the sample came from, though if he went missing, what could they have used to extract it? I doubt the likelihood of any viable blood or saliva being found at his house, as the article states that the mother only became worried after a week…

Now obviously he was not missing when his DNA sample was taken. Whether or not he had any prior arrests/convictions is unclear, however it is my understanding that the taking of DNA at the time of arrest is a recent thing. Taking these DNA samples at birth is even more recent. So I am ruling out the likelihood that the sample was taken and stored at birth or at time of arrest. So where did the sample come from? And why was it stored? Who puts forth the effort and expense to store DNA samples from random people? To me this indicates a larger scale database, from which samples of missing persons were pulled and given to a missing persons database, that was operational in the seventies.

Anyone know anything more about this?
Looking into this further led me to all kinds of
The whole idea of DNA samples taken at birth is in my opinion a horrible idea, and will only lead to discrimination, segregation, and negative eugenics. by citizens, corporations (think insurance companies or the movie gattaca), and governments (a new hitler would have an much easier job).

Some interesting reading on the topic:

The following link acknowledges the covert collection and storage of blood samples from all newborns in Michigan…
http://politechbot.com/pipermail/politech/2003-December/000282.html

“National ‘DNA Warehousing’ Bill Passes” (2008)
http://www.aapsonline.org/newsoftheday/0025

someones compilation of links on the topic… looks very thorough but I have not gone through it yet
http://z4.invisionfree.com/The_Great_Deception/index.php?showtopic=9025
http://z4.invisionfree.com/The_Great_Deception/index.php?showtopic=8789

in canada (although you gotta love how they spelled the page name “cadadna”):

Namecheap Education Program: Free Domains for Students

[mnemosyne]

Neglecting technicalities such as a sample of nothing but pure mature red blood cells, pretty much every cell in your body contains DNA, and DNA is an incredibly stable molecule. Hair, blood, skin, semen, whatever all contain DNA. A sample of hair from a hairbrush could have been kept for reasons as simple as wanting to compare the colour/hair type if new evidence were found, but once the question of DNA comes into it from new evidence, that sample can be used to extract DNA for a comparison to something else. In old cases that’s usually what happened: a sample of body tissue such as blood was kept for other reasons, and eventually DNA tested.

[Crescend]

@mnemosyne

Neglecting technicalities such as a sample of nothing but pure mature red blood cells, pretty much every cell in your body contains DNA, and DNA is an incredibly stable molecule. Hair, blood, skin, semen, whatever all contain DNA. A sample of hair from a hairbrush could have been kept for reasons as simple as wanting to compare the colour/hair type if new evidence were found, but once the question of DNA comes into it from new evidence, that sample can be used to extract DNA for a comparison to something else. In old cases that’s usually what happened: a sample of body tissue such as blood was kept for other reasons, and eventually DNA tested.

It’s stable-ish, assuming it’s kept away from reactive environments or DNAse enzymes (which bacteria have and decaying tissue liberates). So although some DNA can survive for ages and ages (see ancient DNA sequencing), it does require some attention to storage conditions to make sure you still have some after years of storage. Ideally, it’d be sitting someplace in a -80C freezer.

[KP]

Um… a DNA database entry on someone who went missing in 1974? They didn’t say that, but I’m guessing the “profile” in question would have been height, weight, appearance, timing, etc. and have nothing to do with DNA databases. Something is missing from this story.

We didn’t have *Taq * [Thermus aquaticus] DNA polymerase or PCR in '76. DNA sequencing was an uncommon research technique, usually done by tedious destructive techniques requiring large samples of DNA (100s-1000s of grams of raw tissue) RFLP (restriction fragment length polymorphisms) was a decade in the future, and even then used to investigate individual genes for genetic research, not criminology

I may be a bit rusty, but I trained as a molecular biologist in the 80s, and IIRC a scheme for potential profiling was suggested until ca the infamous 1984 [when hypervariable satellite DNA, which varies significantly between individuals, was discovered and proposed for identification of individuals] The first DNA conviction wasn’t until several years later, so nobody was building DNA databases. They wouldn’t have known what to “fingerprint” and RFLP was very expensive – not “thousands of dollars per crime” expensive – more like “several years of NIH grants to build an academic lab and experience” expensive. Moreover, different types of DNA profiling don’t give compatible data – use the wrong type of profile (e.g. different enzymes) and it’d be like matching a fingerprint to a palm print

I’ll happily accept correction on this, because I never studied DNA forensics – largely because it wasn’t a field yet! (You bet I woulda if I coulda. It would’ve been a cool course) However as I recall the state of the art, there weren’t and couldn’t be DNA profile databases even ten years after his disappearance

You CAN get a match from a very old John Doe tissue sample against a missing person’s known hospital pathology/blood sample, hairs in a brush, whatever, but you’d have to have some non-DNA reason to test that John Doe’s tissue with the same technique that you are using on the missing person’s surviving samples, and that’s a fair bit of resources to throw against a hunch

While it’s physically possible for the work of two exceptionally diligent teams (one working a decade’s old cold case and the other cataloging DNA of decades-old John Does) to accidentally meet in the night, I find it unlikely that “John Doe” tissue samples would have been retained for 10-20 years in the 70s in the hope that it would still be usable by some unknown future scientific advance – or that the police have the budget to process their decades-old John Does

So, please, what am I missing?

[ZenBeam]

From the article:

On July 27, 2004, Southward [the missing man’s sister], along with her mother and four remaining siblings, went to the Fairfield Police Department to give DNA samples.

It took more than a year to create the profile, but once it was done, she said she was optimistic something would happen, even though the rest of her family didn’t.

This is what they matched the remains to, not something of the missing person that they kept.

In 1976, human remains were found in Dixie County near the Taylor County line and close to U.S. 19. Authorities investigating at the time conducted an examination that determined the remains were those of a male who had been deceased for about two years.

For years, the remains stayed in FDLE’s evidence vault until Kennedy sent a sample of the remains to the University of North Texas, where scientists were able to extract DNA and obtain a DNA profile.

And these are the remains that they matched.

[Shmendrik]

You’ve misread the article. They found an unidentified murder victim in the 1970s, and the body (or samples of it) was stored, presumably frozen, for years. At some point, they extracted DNA samples from the stored remains. Meanwhile, the victim’s family had given samples of their own DNA to a “missing persons database”. The newly extracted DNA from the victim was matched to the family’s DNA, allowing them to identify the victim.

Nothing in the article suggests a surreptitious government program to collect DNA.

Edit: In other words, what ZenBeam said.

[KP]

Yes, I did understand that.

I didn’t understand that they had kept the actual remains of the John Doe for about 20 years. That is highly unusual to say the least. Human remains are usually disposed of fairly quickly, even if foul play is suggested. Where would we put them all? (And, in the 70s, who could have foreseen a use for them? – as a practical matter, few 20 year old cases are solved, even with DNA evidence)

I’m also a bit surprised that they created an approximate profile from family DNA. It’s quite possible, but still very rare, because it’s usually unnecessary. If one has a “suspect”, consanguinity (relatedness) can be determined by direct comparison with family DNA without a year of reconstruction. Relatedness is usually good enough because one rarely loses multiple relatives of a similar degree, with similar physical description a given timeframe [To lose one parent is a tragedy, to lose both smacks of carelessness]. If you know “this body is as closely related as your uncle”, you rarely have cause to wonder “Is it Uncle Bob or Uncle Jim?” If one doesn’t have a “suspect”, the cost, expense and effort of profiling is likely wasted, because a 70s target would rarely be in any database

Reconstructing a profile from relative can be useful in high profile medical mysteries [“is this buried infant a descendant of Jefferson and Heming?”; “is this really the body of Lincoln?”] where the best surviving verifiable sample source is more than one generation removed from the subject to be matched, but is usually unnecessary when closer living family members are available.

Given that the original remains were kept for so long, and profiled, the rest of the story is technically plausible, but that’s still an unlikely enough set of circumstances that I’m still a wee bit skeptical that we have the Straight Dope – but my lingering personal incredulity doesn’t mean much.

I’m hoping some SDer knows of other accounts or has experience in this field