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Nowhere to Hide: Extracting DNA from Air, Water, and Sand

photograph of gloved hand taking water sample

David Duffy and his team from the University of Florida recently discovered a groundbreaking method for tracking the health and whereabouts of sea turtles. As the turtles represent an endangered species, the scientists’ goal was to study their migration patterns and to identify the environmental factors that might be influencing their health and well-being. Researchers found that they were able to extract meaningful DNA samples from air, water, and sand at the beach. Those samples allowed researchers to draw conclusions about sub-populations and to test for the presence of pathogens that lead to a particularly deadly form of cancer in sea turtles.

The discovery that significant DNA information could be extracted from these sources is great news for conservation scientists as well as for people who care about the preservation and well-being of animals more broadly. Scientists can use genetic information about animals without disturbing them in their natural habitats; they can wait until an animal has vacated a space before using the genetic material left behind to learn more about the creature and that creature’s community.

Researchers also learned something with more controversial consequences. Meaningful amounts of human DNA were extracted from air, water, and sand as well — amounts of DNA that can pick out the genetic code of specific individuals. This means that human beings, like other animals, leave behind genetic information essentially everywhere we go. This discovery gives rise to many important moral questions.

One such question is: who owns discarded pieces of a person’s body? Does the person still have some rights of ownership over physical matter that comes from their own body? If so, do these ownership rights entail a corresponding right to decide what can be done with the matter? Or, instead, are discarded cells like trash — once we’ve shed them, we no longer have any reasonable claim to ownership over them? Should we adopt a “finders keepers” attitude when it comes to discarded genetic material?

One response may be that treating small bits of discarded material as part of a person’s body is impractical and unrealistic. If shedding cells is something we do everywhere we go, there can be no returning discarded cells. At that point, the living source has lost any control. It might be tempting to think that there isn’t much at stake here.

That said, humans don’t have the best track record when it comes to using genetic material in morally responsible ways. For example, in one famous case, a woman named Henrietta Lacks consented to a biopsy as part of her cancer treatment. Scientists used her genetic material for research and found that her cells — now called HeLa cells — had remarkable properties that led to major advances in medical treatment. For decades, Lacks’ family was not compensated in any way for their matriarch’s contribution. One reason to be concerned about Duffy’s discovery is that a person’s cells could easily be used to profit others without any compensation accruing to the source. If this is the case, a person’s discarded genetic material may just be a new capitalist frontier to commodify and exploit.

But there are other reasons to be concerned that genetic information will be misused. For instance, in the late 1980s, members of the Havasupi Tribe provided their genetic material for the purposes of studying Type II Diabetes, a condition from which many members of the tribe suffered. Unbeknownst to the donors, the genetic information was used to research migration patterns, inbreeding, and schizophrenia within the tribe. Migration studies of tribal members, in particular, could potentially disrupt the already tenuous relationship that Native Persons have with the land and provide another avenue for governmental exploitation. When genetic material is collected or used without consent, it can lead to further discrimination and racism.

In addition to these concerns, we also tend to think that a person is entitled to privacy when it comes to details about their own body. When we shed our DNA, we don’t do so intentionally; we don’t give consent. But if an institution or individual was able to extract DNA from a location where we unwittingly shed it, they could come to know all kinds of details about any of us. The right to privacy begins within the borders of one’s own body even if those borders might shift or extend.

Then, of course, there are the implications for forensic science. Since its discovery, DNA has changed the landscape in criminal justice. There is no doubt this has had some tremendous positive consequences. Killers who had gone free for decades to commit all sorts of atrocities were eventually captured using DNA, sometimes through the use of unconventional methods. That said, the presence of DNA is not always evidence that a specific individual committed a crime. Sometimes context gets lost when DNA evidence is found. Finding a person’s DNA at a scene, even when there is a harmless explanation for that fact, can blind investigators to other explanations and prevent them from looking into other viable suspects whose DNA was, for whatever reason, not extracted.

Duffy’s discovery encourages speculation about a future in which it is impossible to get away with committing a crime — one in which there will always be genetic evidence to connect a person to a scene at the time a crime was committed. In such a world, we might wonder, what happens to Fourth Amendment rights? We might be looking at a future in which the genetic tapestry of any space is, in a sense, open access. In such a world, what would it mean for search and seizure to be “unreasonable”?

Finally, we can ask the question about this technology that we find ourselves asking over and over in this age: is this knowledge worth pursuing, or are we opening Pandora’s Box which can never be closed? We tend to treat all technological knowledge as intrinsically valuable, as if we are always justified in pursuing new frontiers. It may be the case, however, that some knowledge is not worth having, such as the number of blades of grass on a lawn or the number of grains of sand on a beach. Other knowledge is worse than neutral or useless, it is all things considered harmful. Consider, for example, knowledge of how to construct biological weapons or weapons of mass destruction. We treat pursuit of this kind of information as if it is inevitable, but it really isn’t. Should we view ourselves as subject to some kind of irresistible technological determinism such that if it is possible to create new tech, we are powerless to stop it? Instead, we might do well to consider carefully the implications of our discoveries and regulate the technology in ways that respect fundamental values.

Making a Murderer, Brain Fingerprinting, and the Ownership of Thoughts

Photograph of a billboard that says Avery's Auto Salvage and 24-Hour Towing

In 2015, Netflix released the first season of the docu-series Making a Murderer.  The series follows the story of convicted murderer Steven Avery. Avery’s case is noteworthy because, in 1985, he was wrongfully convicted for the rape and attempted murder of Penny Beernsten. The Innocence Project used DNA technology that did not exist at the time at which Avery was convicted to prove that Avery was innocent and that a different man had committed the crime. Avery was released in 2003 and subsequently filed a $36 million lawsuit for unlawful conviction against Manitowoc County, among others.

In 2005, photographer Teresa Holbach went missing. Her most recent scheduled appointment was to photograph a van at Avery’s home for his family business, Avery’s Auto Salvage. Charred fragments of Holbach’s bones were later found in a fire pit on Steven Avery’s property. Avery and his young cousin, Brendan Dassey were convicted of Holbach’s murder.

As a docu-series, Making a Murderer was widely successful. Many viewers were left with the impression that the evidence against Avery was planted and that the police misconduct was motivated, at least in part, by a desire to affect the outcome of the impending lawsuit. Many were also left with the impression that Brendan Dassey was wrongly convicted as well because, when interrogated, he was a minor with a particularly low IQ. Many feel that the officers who interrogated him fed him the information that comprised his false confession.

One might think that the way that the details were presented in the first season of Making a Murderer was morally questionable. The producers of the series left many details out, including the fact that a sample of Steven Avery’s touch DNA was found on the hood latch of Teresa Holbach’s car. Many viewers of the Netflix series became very personally invested in the case, going so far as to write letters to Avery, Dassey, and the law enforcement officials they hold responsible for what they view as the wrongful conviction of two innocent men. The series also had the effect of opening old wounds for those who loved Teresa. True crime is a popular form of entertainment. We should, perhaps, put more thought into the fact that these stories that serve as entertainment for so many are quite real for the people involved.

Despite these concerns, Netflix recently released a second season of Making a Murderer. One might naturally wonder whether reviving the story was an ethically defensible thing to do. This season focuses on both Avery’s and Dassey’s quest for post conviction relief. In 2016, defense attorney Kathleen Zellner took on Avery’s case, and the new season of the show focuses heavily on her efforts to prove Avery innocent. One tool she uses in this endeavor is a relatively new technology known as “brain fingerprinting.” Brain fingerprinting involves showing an individual (in a criminal case, presumably a suspect) a series of images or words. Some of the images will be associated with the case at hand, some will not. The individual is hooked up to electrodes that monitor their brain activity. When an image is familiar to the person, there will be electrical activity in their brain in predictable locations within 300 milliseconds. When the images or words are unfamiliar, there will be no such activity, or the activity will be of a different type. Brain fingerprinting, then, serves as a far more sophisticated lie detector test. While lie detector tests detect physical changes like sweat and heightened blood pressure, brain fingerprinting looks directly at the location the thought is taking place. Zellner claims that brain fingerprinting of Steven Avery reveals that he does not remember key features of the crime committed against Teresa Holbach and could not, therefore, be guilty of the crime for which he has been convicted.

In this case, brain fingerprinting was used by a defense attorney to establish that a particular perpetrator could not have committed a specific crime. At this stage, then, it doesn’t appear as if there is a lot of potential for abuse. But is this a technology we should be comfortable with governmental officials making use of? There are a number of reasonable concerns about the use of this practice.

The first set of concerns has to do with accuracy. Making a Murderer’s Larry Farwell contends that the technique has a 100% success rate—a claim that is rather difficult to believe. Even if the test is 100% effective at measuring something, surely what it measures will be highly contingent on nature of the images or words shown to the potential suspect.

Another concern is that the test has the potential to be more prejudicial than probative. Even if the test reliably indicates that a person remembers something, the test cannot reveal precisely why they remember that thing. What’s more, human minds are complex. Events and crime scenes are nuanced. So, though the test might indicate that the suspect remembers something, it cannot establish with certainty what exactly is being remembered. Finally, the fact that a suspect’s scan indicates that they are familiar with, say, an, object, location, or event, does not entail that the suspect’s association with what they remember is indicative of a mens rea—a guilty mind.  

Concerns about this new technology don’t end there. Even if the accuracy of the procedure was perfect—even if we could establish that a suspect remembers something, what it is they are remembering, and why they are remembering it, there still be may significant moral reasons that speak against the use of this procedure by the government. It may be that human beings have a fundamental right to bodily autonomy and privacy, the importance of which outweighs the government’s interest in catching criminals. Seeing to it that criminals are held accountable for their actions is a laudable goal. One might think, however, that our own personal thoughts are inherently, inviolably ours. This might be the right place to draw an insuperable line.

Getting Personal About Personal Genetic Information

Photograph of two boxes by the brand 23AndMe

Learning about the ins and outs of what makes you, you has become a trend in recent years due primarily to the popularization of genetic testing companies such as 23andMe, AncestryDNA, or GEDmatch. All three companies may have stickier corporate policies than what you might expect from a harmless saliva collection kit. In fact, in recent months, story after story has surfaced regarding the largely nonexistent privacy protections on personal genetic information. At the end of April 2018, authorities were able to identify and eventually prosecute the ‘Golden State Killer’ suspect using genetic information, which was acquired through a genealogy site called GEDmatch.

This site, as explained by The Atlantic, is a website where individuals can upload their genetic information in the hopes of finding unknown relatives through DNA commonalities. However, authorities utilized this site to create a fake profile and uploaded DNA found at a crime scene, where it was soon matched to a distant relative of the man eventually identified as the killer. As you can imagine, this created a widespread privacy concern for not just GEDmatch users but consumers of other genetic testing databases, and provoked questions about whether the greater common good was morally permissible over breaching individual privacy. It was revealed through the Freedom of Information Act that the Federal Trade Commission is investigating DNA testing companies like 23andMe and Ancestory.com over their policies for handling personal infomation and genetic data and how they share that information with third parties.

Not only has private genetic information been exploited to solve multiple murder cases, but in 2017 NBC warned consumers of the potential risks of giving companies access to their complete genetic codes. As Peter Pitts, who is part of  a medical advocacy group, stated,  genetic code “is the most valuable thing you own”. Although the majority of legitimate companies ensure customers that they do not share this information with researchers or third parties, media outlets including NBC are encouraging people to read the fine print of these broad contracts that have to be signed before personal samples are submitted for analysis. In fact, even though many of these companies market themselves as purely targeting genealogy, there is still critical information about your health illustrated in your genetic code, which in the wrong hands could be devastating to personal privacy.

Even more terrifying is the concealed nature of genetic information. For example, in comparison to your credit card information, where you can eventually see purchases which cannot be attributed to your own spending, you may never find out if a third party has your personal genetic information. Beyond having something interesting to discuss over the Thanksgiving table, many individuals use DNA testing in order to contribute to future medical advances. However, as Marcy Darnovsky of The New York Times suggests, “there are more efficient ways of contributing to medical advances than paying to hand over your genetic health information to companies like 23andMe.” In late 2015, 23andMe announced two deals with some of the largest pharmaceutical and biotech corporations in the industry in order to find treatments for diseases hidden in our DNA. Concerns arise after reading through 23andMe’s consent document, which acknowledges the fact that once you send off your genetic information there are no guarantees of anonymity. In fact, breaches in confidentiality could affect more than just you — they could impact your family members as well, since you share a similar genetic code. Darnovsky explains that “a 2008 law prohibits health insurance companies and employers from discrimination based on genetic information, but the law does not cover disability, life, or long-term care insurance.”  

Another noteworthy negative impact of this information being provided is that the general public may not be able to decipher wordy scientific information. How are they going to deal with potentially devastating news about their own or their children’s future health, in terms of genetic risk for getting certain diseases or their carrier status? A quick look at the 23andMe website shows that anyone can get their health information regarding genetic probability for certain illnesses. 23andMe actually states “Genetic Health Risk reports – learn how your genetics can influence your risk for certain diseases”. Even though they do mention that having positive for a certain gene does not necessarily mean one will get the disease, a naïve or uninformed individual could take this information to mean that they are certainly getting this illness. In this new era of simplifying genetic information so the general public can “learn more about themselves,” it is imperative that we not only advertise companies that can make this possible, but also make clear the risks associated with such lenient confidentiality contracts. A breach of your genetic information means anyone in a pharmaceutical company laboratory not only knows what color eyes you have, but they know exactly what diseases you have a probability of getting. Careful evaluation is therefore critical in determining whether learning more about oneself through genetic testing, is worth the risk produced due not only to many companies negligence of personal privacy, but their nonspecific privacy guarantees which could easily be exploited by third parties.

The takeaway for any lay person not familiar with the ins and outs of genetic information specifically how to interpret it,  is that they should be especially cautious of these geneology tests. Consumers should take care to read the fine print which describes the company  privacy policies and also recognize these genetic testing companies as businesses who will protect their own interests, whether or not they are favorable or not to their consumers.

 

Spilled Blood in the Bloodline: The Ethics of Using Genealogy to Catch Criminals

On April 24th 2018, authorities arrested 72- year-old Joseph James DeAngelo.  Investigators had compelling evidence to suggest that DeAngelo committed at least 12 murders, 50 rapes, and over 100 burglaries throughout California in the 70s and 80s, earning him the monikers “The East Area Rapist” and “The Golden State Killer.” DeAngelo might have lived out his life without being caught were it not for the existence of a genealogy website.

Continue reading “Spilled Blood in the Bloodline: The Ethics of Using Genealogy to Catch Criminals”

By Means of Human Selection: The Birth of Three-Parent Babies

In the late 1990’s, doctors at the St. Barnabus Institute in New Jersey developed a groundbreaking new technique—they successfully produced a child using the genetic material of three different donor parents.  The motivation for the innovation was to help certain at-risk couples have healthy biological children of their own.  The procedure, if successful, blocks the spread of disease that is sometimes passed through mitochondrial DNA—a genetic contribution passed to children by their biological mothers.  Some women pass on mitochondrial DNA that causes muscular dystrophy or respiratory problems.  Leigh Syndrome, a fatal disease, is also passed through mitochondrial DNA.  

Continue reading “By Means of Human Selection: The Birth of Three-Parent Babies”