Category Archives: Transhuman News

A DNA expert known nationally for her criticism that led to the temporary shuttering of Houston's crime lab turned a skeptical eye to Bexar County's procedures Tuesday as testimony resumed in the high-profile murder trial of Jon Thomas Ford.

Dr. Elizabeth Johnson described the DNA analysis of a bloody towel found over the head of Dana Clair Edwards, 32, as potentially sloppy.

Ford, 43, was arrested in February 2010 a little more than a year after Edwards, his ex-girlfriend, was found strangled on the floor of her guest bathroom. Her dog Grit was found dead at nearby Olmos Dam a week later.

Ford told police he was home asleep in the first hours of New Year's Day 2009, when the killing is believed to have occurred, but his cellphone records suggest otherwise. The eventual link of Ford's DNA to the towel was one of the major breaks in the case that led to the arrest, authorities have said.

Johnson on Tuesday focused in part on the admission that a Bexar County crime lab analyst found his own DNA in one of eight cuttings he took from the towel. Two other cuttings showed DNA consistent with Ford's.

That's really bad form. ... It's among the most preventable types of contamination, Johnson said. Any time you see an analyst that had a careless event such as this ... you have to wonder how careless and sloppy that person is.

Johnson took the stand at the request of defense attorney Dick DeGuerin, who once represented her in a successful whistle-blower lawsuit against Harris County, where she helped establish a DNA lab in the early 1990s.

Her later criticism of the Houston Police Department's embattled crime lab has been credited, in part, with leading to the facility being shut down in 2002. The lab's DNA division remained shuttered for four years.

But prosecutor Kirsta Melton noted during cross-examination that Johnson, whose consulting business is based out of Southern California, seems to work exclusively for defense attorneys these days.

Ford's DNA was discovered on the towel in December 2009, but his DNA swab obtained by police wasn't tested for comparison until a month later, Melton pointed out. That would make accidental cross-contamination in the lab an impossibility, she suggested.

Read more from the original source:
Witness targets analysis of DNA

A Thai medic checks bodies for forensic identity in Phang Nga province in southern of Thailand on Jan. 11, 2005. Thousands of people were killed in Thailand after a massive tsunami struck on Dec. 26, 2004.

Human DNA is the ultimate fingerprint. A single hair can contain enough information to determine someone's identity a feature that's been invaluable for identifying the unnamed casualties of natural disasters and war. But forensic scientists who use DNA say the technology isn't always available where it's most needed, like in poor countries, or in war zones like Syria.

The technology is often too expensive or too complicated, and where there are large numbers of unknown dead, you need far more than just DNA profiling equipment. You also need sophisticated computer programs to organize and match DNA samples from numerous family members, as well as experts to read the samples properly.

Alex John London, a medical ethicist at Carnegie Mellon University, says that while there are numerous groups that do DNA identification worldwide, and the process is often ad hoc and erratic.

It was largely the Indian Ocean tsunami that got forensic experts thinking. There were tens of thousands of unidentified bodies, and DNA experts flocked to Thailand to set up labs. Tom Parsons, a DNA expert with the International Commission on Missing Persons, says Thailand got the attention because western tourists died there. Their governments sent teams to find their bodies, but it didn't go well.

"All of the world's first-rate forensic teams took off to Thailand, where white people were killed," Parsons says, "with no centralized plan, pushing and pulling." Governments funded the effort because they wanted their citizens' remains back. But it was "really a mess," says Parsons. Different groups wouldn't share their technology, and even disagreed on how to do the DNA analysis. There was little coordination.

Eventually Interpol, the international police organization, intervened. The commission ended up identifying some 900 people, mostly Thais who might not have been identified otherwise.

Parsons says in the end the DNA work in Thailand was a success, but it revealed to forensic experts that there might be a better way to do this that in fact a permanent organization with DNA "chops," money and an international mandate to respond to disasters might work better.

"Our concern was that there should be a mechanism in place that would allow access to DNA identification beyond just ability to pay," London says. "Too often if there isn't a funder out there, then people who are missing relatives won't get access to the technology."

So forensic scientists are calling for the creation of a DNA identification organization one that functions much in the same way the International Atomic Energy Agency does, which sends inspectors to nuclear facilities.

View original post here:
After Disasters, DNA Science Is Helpful, But Often Too Pricey