National DNA Register

[MikeyT]

I'd gladly let 'em take a swab from me if it helped catch that rapist guy down south.

What's the big problem with this ... lots of crime instantly solved I'd have thought. But I'm not so naive as to believe it would all be this simple ... so what's the catch? Is it an invasion of privacy. Some may think it is, but it wouldn't worry me.

[Jason F]

This sort of information would not be safe IMHO. The Govt cannot keep the information it has secure and accurate.

What would also concern me is that what would happen if this info was sent to an insurance company 'to prevent fraud' you understand, and then the insurance co refuses your life policy because genetically you may contract cancer or something.

The socialist govt me have now seem a helluva lot more right wing than Mr Heseltine...

[marki]

if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to hide , the trouble is this would only be the first step

[AlexH]

marki said: if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to hide , the trouble is this would only be the first step

Couldn't agree more, various schemes like this seem ok at first, but where will it lead?

[david010167]

Have you seen the film Gattica (spelling), now that os a scary thought of what could occur.

or Aldus Huxley's Brave New world for an extreme on genetic control.

Personaly if it makes tomatos tastier, then it has got to be a good thing

David

[Basil Brush]

I was told by a cop that the idea was put forward to DNA test the whole of the police force in order to be able to eliminate them from crime scene analysis. Apparently the cops rejected the idea as they do not trust the agencies who would do the testing.

Don't know if it's totally true, but a bit worrying for the rest of us.

[funkydredd]

How can a GM tomato be tastier than a tomato is supposed to taste?

[Bonce]

Mistakes happen. Do you really want to run the risk of being hauled before the beak for a heinous crime you didn't commit?

I thought not. Think what an alleged rape or even burglary charge would do to your life.

[BLUETHUNDER]

Ah d.n.a testing if it has no ulterior motive i would agree but i cannot help thinking their is something sinister behind this ,it seems that daily we lose a little bit more of our freedom and feel we are heading for a dictatorship

[Bodo]

I'm not open source!

[Jason F]

Bonce said: Mistakes happen. Do you really want to run the risk of being hauled before the beak for a heinous crime you didn't commit?

I thought not. Think what an alleged rape or even burglary charge would do to your life.

That is bad enough, but it would NOT be alleged would it. They would have your DNA on file so you are GUILTY of rape/murder/burglary until such time as they notice they made an error.....

[WalterU]

very very very dangerous. Your DNA says absolutely everything about you, it could be used by insurances to refuse you cover, your employer to chuck you out because you have some predeliction to some sort of occupational illness etc. etc.

You would be automatically guilty of your DNA matched or supposedly matched. And there's the rub. Fingerprints are supposedly infallible, but it is now in the public domain that there are a few cases where people have been wrongly imprisoned due to (faulty)fingerprint evidence.

If you can mess THAT up, you much easier to mess up something so much more complex as DNA??

Rgds, WalterU

[DancingMoose]

The reason speeding is "guilty until proven innocent" is because 'the powers that be' think it's so easy to identify the guilty culprit.

I can see this technology taking far more serious crimes the same way.

[nmlowe]

funkydredd said: How can a GM tomato be tastier than a tomato is supposed to taste?

Same way that 'Sunny Delight' allegedly tastes better than real fruit juice!

[Fatboy]

Added to the fact that DNA evidence is not as great as everybody thinks - the chances of a wrong ID are as high as 1 in a million IIRC....