On the Edges of Science and Law

DNA Evidence – A Boon to Law Enforcement, but the Start of a Storage Nightmare

by Lori Andrews

When I spoke a national meeting of law enforcement personnel and prosecutors, I was fascinated by the new forensic tools spanning every type of evidence -- from photographs to footprints, from gum to guns.  But, in the hallways, between the scientific and legal presentations, the men and women working in the criminal justice system sounded a lot like 20somethings complaining about their first apartment.  Sure, there were changes in technologies.  But there was a bigger problem:  Where were they going to store all the evidence?
 
With the advent of DNA technologies, forensic officials who had been pack rats were able to convict people of old crimes. This past weekend, for example, a suspect was arrested for the 1989 murder of an elderly woman; modern DNA technology allowed old evidence to be analyzed.   Evidence from decades ago has also been retested through efforts like the Innocence Project, letting many innocent men go free. In fact, yesterday, the Richmond Times Dispatch announced six training sessions for volunteer lawyers on how to contact the 881 Virginia felons whose old cases included evidence ripe for potentially-exculpatory genetic testing.

Jurassic Yeast

 By Jake Meyer  

In 1990, Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Park, a best-selling novel about cloned dinosaurs created from the DNA obtained from mosquitoes trapped in amber.  Crichton’s Jurassic Park cautions us against tinkering with biotechnology by bringing the past to the present.  However, Crichton might not have considered what one microbiologist has released that was trapped in amber -- a mighty fine brew.

Raul Cano discovered that microorganisms trapped in amber, which have laid dormant in a state of hibernation for millions of years, could be revived.  In 1995, Cano extracted one such microorganism from a 45 million-year-old fossil -- a variant of Sacchramoyces cervisiae -- also known as "brewer's yeast."  But you don’t wake up prehistoric brewer’s yeast without wondering what kind of beer it would make. 

Robin Cook and Bioethics

 By Lori Andrews 

Robin Cook attended medical school before the birth of the patients' rights and bioethics movements.  Last month in New York at Thrillerfest, the national meeting of thriller writers, Cook explained that he began writing medical mysteries as a way to make the public aware of the dangers and risks inherent in modern medicine.

"Patients used to come to me and say, 'I want to be put to sleep during the operation.'  They had no idea what was going on.  I'd say to them, 'It's not like being put to sleep.  It's like being poisoned and then revived.'"