A " Privacy " Issue !

Have you ever wondered if your family history may have included a convict transported to Australia when the First Fleet arrived ?    That used to be a matter of shame to be scrupulously avoided but in todays more open world many people are curios about their ancestry and the tools are available to make detailed searches.

It can be exciting to find a convict lurking in the distant past and many organizations can help with that search.  They need to known details of your parents and grandparents on both sides of the family and they usually also ask for a DNA sample.  That can be as simple as spitting into a specimen jar.

In the last few decades DNA research has increased in great leaps and bounds.  Every few months it makes unprecedented progress.   We are fast reaching the stage when the presence of a suspect at a crime scene can be detected without finding an actual fingerprint.  The air we breathe can transfer our DNA to where it can be recognised by the ever improving detection apparatus.

This march of progress is being headed by law enforcement.  DNA analysis is a vital tool of police forensics and many a case has been solved by extracting DNA from a discarded cigarette butt or from a drink can.  Law enforcement is using ever widening methods of accessing the gene pool to narrow the search for offenders and this is fast becoming a privacy issue.

That raises the issue of DNA samples we have willingly provided to medical organizations and to the various researchers who track our ancestry records.  The DNA search engines are fast reaching the stage where the DNA of a suspect can be cross matched to that of a member of his or her family - if the DNA of another family member is on record somewhere.

That is a chilling thought. Many a very respectable family has a " black sheep " that rarely gets a mention in polite conversation.   They dread the day a conviction may lead to lurid newspaper or other media stories which highlights their association.  The police use of DNA technology is ever widening and the use of the genetic database is sought by Interpol.  It is now quite possible to link a criminal operating abroad with the data from a family living in another country.

This increasing research may soon make it possible for a criminal to be positively identified simply by cross matching his or her DNA to other family members.  As the need for DNA samples widens for medical reasons and for ancestry research the DNA pool records widen exponentially.  We may have supplied a sample without our knowledge.

We may have passed the point of no return.  If even a distant member of our family is on DNA record that may be sufficient to start the researchers looking in our direction.  It is impossible to determine just what heights DNA analysis may reach in the years ahead.  Our identity may be instantly available from a common data base by mid century.