Reproductive technologies and the legal determination of fatherhood

In Re D is the most recent in a line of cases to raise problems with the determination of legal fatherhood under s.28(3) of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. The judgments in In Re D are interesting in particular because they demonstrate the growing currency of the idea that a child has a right to ‘genetic truth’. They also further evidence the ‘fragmentation of fatherhood’. This case is best understood as part of a complex and ongoing negotiation of men’s role in the family in the light of shifting family forms.     

Beware of the possibility of fingerprinting techniques transferring DNA

Fingerprinting brushes have the potential to collect and transfer DNA during powdering. Squirrel-hair fingerprint brushes exposed to specific sets of saliva stains and brushes used in routine casework were tested for their ability to collect and transfer DNA containing material using standard DNA extraction procedures and AmpFlSTR Profiler Plus amplification and typing procedures. The tests found that the risk of transferring DNA during powdering and having a detrimental impact on the analysis increases if the examiner powders over either biological stains (such as blood or saliva) or very fresh prints and uses more sensitive PCR amplification and typing procedures. We advocate caution when powdering prints from which DNA may also be collected and provide options for consideration to limit the risk of transferred DNA contamination while fingerprinting.     

GC-MS of ignitable liquids using solvent-desorbed SPME for automated analysis

Solid-phase microextraction (SPME) is well documented with respect to its convenience and applicability to sampling volatiles. Nonetheless, fire debris analysts have yet to widely adopt SPME as a viable extraction technique, although several fire debris studies have demonstrated the utility of SPME coupled with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to identify ignitable liquids. This work considers the expansion of SPME sampling from the customary thermal desorption mode to solvent-based analyte desorption for the analysis of ignitable residues. SPME extraction fibers are desorbed in 30 microL of nonaqueous solvent to yield a solution amenable to conventional GC-MS analysis with standard autosampler apparatus. This approach retains the advantages of convenience and sampling time associated with thermal desorption while simultaneously improving the flexibility and throughput of the method. Based on sampling results for three ignitable liquids (gasoline, kerosene, anddiesel fuel) in direct comparisons with the widely used activated charcoal strip (ACS) method this methodology appears to be a viable alternative to the routinely used ACS method.     

Reviews

Susan Gross Solomon (ed.), Pluralism in the Soviet Union. Essays in Honour of H. Gordon Skilling. London: Macmillan, 1983, xiii + 179 pp. £20.00.

George Yaney. The Urge to Mobilize: Agrarian Reform in Russia, 1861–1930. Urbana, Chicago, London: University of Illinois Press, 1982, xii + 599 pp. £18.75.

Roy Medvedev, All Stalin's Men. Translated by Harold Shukman. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983, x + 184 pp. £8.95.

Robert F. Byrnes (ed.), After Brezhnev: Sources of Soviet Conduct in the 1980s. London: Frances Pinter, 1983, xviii + 457 pp., bibliography and index, h/b £16.50, p/b £6.95.

Basile Kerblay, Modern Soviet Society (translated by Rupert Swyer). London: Methuen, 1983, xxvi + 321 pp. h/b £16.00, p/b £7.95.

Max Hayward, Writers in Russia: 1917–1978. Edited and with an introduction by Patricia Blake. London: Harvill Press, 1983, lxxvi + 340 pp. £7.95.

Dina R. Spechler. Permitted Dissent in the USSR. Novy mir and the Soviet Regime. New York: Praeger, 1982, xxiv + 296 pp. $27.95.

Everett M. Jacobs (ed.), Soviet Local Politics and Government, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983, xiv + 225 pp. £15.00, $28.50.

Alan H. Smith, The Planned Economies of Eastern Europe. London: Croom Helm, 1983, 249 pp. £16.95.

John Löwenhardt, The Soviet Politburo. Translated by Dymphna Clark, Edinburgh: Canongate, 1982, 152 pp. £7.95.

Stephen Clissold, Djilas: the progress of a revolutionary. Introduction by Hugh Setton‐Watson. London: Temple Smith, 1983, 343 pp. £15.00.

Steven L. Burg, Conflict and Cohesion in Socialist Yugoslavia: Political Decision Making Since 1966. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton U. P., 1983, xii + 365 pp. $49.00.

Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier: The Soviet Union and the Third World. New York: Praeger, 1983, 185 pp. $21.95.

Dorothy Atkinson, The End Of The Russian Land Commune, 1905–30. Stanford, Calf.: Stanford UP, 1983, xii + 457 pp. $29.50.

Alain Touraine, et al., Solidarity: Poland 1980–81, Cambridge and Paris: CUP jointly with Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1983, xvii + 203 pp. paperback £6.95.