The dark side of the UK National DNA Database

The Lancet ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 362 (9386) ◽  
pp. 834 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vince L Pascali ◽  
Giampietro Lago ◽  
Marina Dobosz
Keyword(s):  
Sociology ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 976-992 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Skinner

This article explores the place of ‘ethnicity’ in the operation, management and contestation of the UK National DNA Database (NDNAD). In doing so, it examines the limitations of bioethics as a response to political questions raised by the new genetics. The UK police forensic database has been racialised in a number of distinct ways: in the over-representation of black people in the database population; in the classification of all DNA profiles according to ‘ethnic appearance’; in the use of data for experiments to determine the ethnicity of crime scene DNA; and in the focus on ethnicity in public debate about the database. This racialisation presented potential problems of legitimacy for the NDNAD but, as the article shows, these have been partly neutralised through systems of ethico-political governance. In these systems of governance discussion of institutional racism has been postponed or displaced by other ways of talking about ethnicity and identity.


The Lancet ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 361 (9372) ◽  
pp. 1841-1842 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Linacre
Keyword(s):  

1998 ◽  
Vol 173 (6) ◽  
pp. 540-543 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Holloway

Reading about the assessment and management of risk began, in earnest, for me in 1993. Previously, I had assumed that good training in the management of suicidal patients, reasonable clinical skills, a high-quality community team and the rarely utilised option of referring worrying patients to the forensic psychiatrists together represented an adequate basis for practice in an inner-city catchment area. This naïve assumption was challenged by the popular and political reaction to the actions of Christopher Clunis and Ben Silcock in December 1992, both people with a schizophrenic illness known to services whose dangerous behaviour put them on the front page of newspapers in the UK. A groundbreaking textbook demonstrates that other medical specialities have, partly because of the threat of litigation, been more effective in analysing sources of risk and developing strategies to manage risk (Vincent, 1995). Improving quality is a central plank of the latest National Health Service reform (Department of Health, 1998). There is no doubt that the political driver for this is “the dark side of quality” (Vincent, 1997), how to deal with perceived or actual performance failures in health care such as the seminal ‘Bristol case’, in which cardiothoracic surgeons with an unusually high mortality rate in carrying out a complex procedure were found guilty of serious professional misconduct (Smith, 1998).


Author(s):  
Emily Róisín Reid

Medical schools are working to widen access to students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, particularly through targeted recruitment within under-doctored regions of the UK. Drawing upon recent research, this article explores ways that place- identity theory can be helpful to career professionals, particularly when thinking about the extent to which where individuals are from influences where they (can) go and what they might need to sacrifice to get there. Bounded student narratives expose the 'dark side' of the social mobility agenda and clash with the quasi-colonial 'world is your oyster' rhetoric of the boundaryless career. Implications for practice are discussed.


2020 ◽  
pp. 119-136
Author(s):  
Nina Amelung ◽  
Rafaela Granja ◽  
Helena Machado

Abstract The UK is the possessor of the world’s oldest and largest DNA database by proportion of population: the National Criminal Intelligence DNA Database, established in 1995. As a nation-state that holds one of the world’s largest DNA databases, the UK has been dealing systematically with the societal effects triggered by various ethical controversies. In terms of bordering practices, the UK serves as an example of an ambivalent mode of re- and debordering. This ambivalence derives from the UK’s changing position regarding the Prüm system. In 2014, the UK government, driven by the parliament, decided to opt out of the Prüm Decisions. In 2015, after a Prüm-style pilot project run with other EU Member States, the UK decided to opt in. This decision, nonetheless, included the imposition of limits on other EU countries’ access to the UK’s data. Consequently, the UK’s debordering practices co-exist with rebordering attempts aimed at restricting access to their own data.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 45-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Opoku Amankwaa ◽  
Carole McCartney
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Ludi Price ◽  
Lyn Robinson

Although several notable collections of fan fiction exist in libraries, such as the Sandy Hereld Fanzine Collection at Texas A&M University (http://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/149935) and the digital fanzine archives at the University of Iowa (http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/sc/resources/fandomresources/), not much attention is given to the systematic selection, acquisition, indexing, preservation, and sharing of fan works in the UK, considering the popularity of fandom, the volume of creative work that exists, and the rate at which new texts are produced. Here we present the results of an investigation into the extent to which UK libraries collect and manage fan fiction, and our attempts to ascertain the reasons underlying collection policy in local, public, special, academic, and national institutions. Our report is based on a review of recent literature, an analysis of the collection policies of a selection of UK libraries, and a brief survey of the views of Library & Information Science students. The empirical work was carried out in spring 2016. Results show that there is a little-known and less-understood dark side to fan fiction, in regard to how it is understood and valued in the library sector, which feeds a widening gap in our cultural heritage.


Author(s):  
Roberto Puch-Solis ◽  
Susan Pope

Forensic DNA provides a striking contribution to the provision of justice worldwide. It has proven to be crucial in the investigative phase of an unsolved crime where a suspect needs to be identified, e.g. from a DNA database search both nationally and internationally. It is also a powerful tool in the assignment of evidential weight to the comparison of a profile of a person of interest and a crime scene profile. The focus of this document is the evaluation of autosomal profiles for criminal trials in the UK. A separate review covers investigation and evaluation of Y-STR profiles, investigation using autosomal profiles, kinship analysis, body identification and Forensic Genetic Genealogy investigations. In less than 40 years, forensic DNA profiling has developed from a specialist technique to everyday use. Borrowing on advances in genome typing technology, forensic DNA profiling has experienced a substantial increase in its sensitivity and informativeness. Alongside this development, novel interpretation methodologies have also been introduced. This document describes the state of the art and future advances in the interpretation of forensic DNA data.


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