Usatoday: l' Fbi incrementa l'utilizzo del suo Dna database

FBI adds uses for its DNA database


By Richard Willing, USA TODAY 30/05/2006

The FBI plans to use its national DNA database system to help identify not only criminals, but also missing persons and tens of thousands of unidentified bodies held by local coroners and medical examiners.
A new computer program planned for this fall will compare genetic profiles taken from unidentified bodies or body parts with DNA submitted by family members of missing persons. The plan takes advantage of the fact that biological relatives sometimes have similar, though not identical, DNA profiles. The FBI will look for near-matches.
The FBI's initiative comes as other branches of the Justice Department are launching programs to identify thousands of murder, accident and other victims identified only as John or Jane Doe.
The International Homicide Investigators Association, a group based in Fredericksburg, Va., that works to raise public awareness of the issue, estimates there are more than 40,000 unidentified dead nationally.
The DNA computer search plan was disclosed by the FBI earlier this month in Boston during a conference of the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics. FBI laboratory officials later elaborated on it.
"We need to broaden our capability," said Thomas Callaghan, director of the FBI's national DNA database program. He said the FBI is in "a very good position" to identify remains through family members because of the agency's small but growing database of missing persons and unidentified remains, plus its experience in using computers to match DNA.
Since 1990, local, state and federal governments have collected DNA from convicted criminals and some people when they are arrested. The FBI's DNA database solves crimes by comparing those DNA profiles, which contain an individual's unique genetic code, to DNA extracted from blood, skin, semen and other tissue at crime scenes.
The national DNA system has about 3 million offender profiles and about 135,000 from the scenes of unsolved crimes. By contrast, the system holds fewer than 2,000 DNA samples from missing persons, their relatives and unidentified remains.
The FBI's ability to compare samples has been limited without a specialized computer search engine. To date, the FBI's system has scored only a handful of matches for missing persons and unidentified remains, Callaghan said.
The number of unidentified remains that can be searched by their DNA profiles should grow significantly as the FBI increases missing-persons testing at four recently opened regional labs.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics expects to soon complete its first comprehensive national count of unidentified dead. Last fall, the National Institute of Justice began paying the University of North Texas to perform DNA testing of unidentified remains for localities that lacked resources. Among the first: towns in Mississippi seeking to identify the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims.
William Hagmaier of the homicide investigators group said coroners, medical examiners and sheriffs need to be encouraged to test unidentified bodies for DNA and to submit the profiles to the FBI.

Posted 5/30/2006 11:31 PM ET
Fonte:
www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-05-30/dnadatabase-xtm