The Expanding Use of DNA in Law Enforcement: What Role for Privacy?

DNA identification is being used in ever-widening ways, including databases of greater scope, familial and lowstringency searches, and DNA dragnets. After examining the law enforcement and privacy interests, the article concludes that forensic DNA uses must be consistent with privacy and civil liberties.     

Computer-Animated Displays and the Jury: Facilitative and Prejudicial Effects

Two experiments assessed the effects of computer-animated displays on mock jurors. In both, participants watched a trial involving a dispute over whether a man who fell to his death had accidentally slipped or jumped in a suicide. They watched a proplaintiff or prodefendant version in which the body landed 5–10 feet or 20–25 feet from the building. Within each condition, the distance testimony was presented orally or with an animated display. When the tape depicted the event in a neutral manner, judgments were more consistent with the physical evidence. But when the plaintiff and defense used the tape to depict their own partisan theories, participants increasingly made judgments that contradicted the physical evidence. Results suggest that computer-animated displays have greater impact than oral testimony. Whether that impact is to facilitate or mislead a jury, however, depends on the nature of the display.     

The relative importance of family planning and development for fertility reduction: Critique of research and development of theory

3 recent studies about the relative effects of family planning and development are reviewed in an effort to point out their limitations and to augment them. A tentative theoretical framework is presented from which the problem of fertility reduction may be viewed. Also presented is an analysis of the "outliers" in 1 of the 3 studies. This analysis involves consideration of macrosocial and contextual aspects of different nations as a supplement to other analyses. Mauldin and Berelson (1978) and Tsui and Bogue (1978) used indicators of social setting and family planning effort to explain declines in, respectively, crude birthrate between 1965 and 1975, and total fertility rates between 1968 and 1975. The 2 studies used nearly identical sets of explanatory variables. With both studies using the same indicators, except for "labor force," it is not surprising that the results were the same. The results were previously obtained by Freedman and Berelson (1976), who also used the Lapham Mauldin index of planning effort along with similar indicators of social setting. Freedman and Berelson found that birthrate declines could be explained better by program effort (which independently explained 17% of the variance in crude birthrate (CBR) declines) than by social setting (which independently accounted for 7% of that variance), and that the 1972 birthrate itself was similarly explained (15% of the variance attributed to program effort alone, 5% to social setting alone). Mauldin and Berelson obtained nearly identical results. In the Tsui and Bogue study, the contribution of the 1968 level of fertility was the dominant influence on the 1975 total fertility rate. The standardized regression coefficient indicated that previous fertility explained 50-60% of subsequent fertility by direct relationship, a figure comparable to the social setting family planning interaction effects (44-58%) in the 2 other studies. Much of this discussion is devoted to an analysis of the "outliers" in the exploratory data analysis done by Sykes for Mauldin and Berelson (1978). The outliers in Sykes' exploratory data analysis were divided along 2 dimensions. The first involves the relationship between predicted and actual reductions in fertility. The 2nd dimension refers to the independent variables used to predict the fertility declines. This analysis involves analysis of contextual variables and an analysis of distributional variables. It is limited by missing data, but the analysis of Freedman and Berelson (1976), Mauldin and Berelson (1978), and Tsui and Bogue (1978) is plagued by missing variables: contextual variables; distributional variables; and unique national, regional, or local circumstances. These can only be adequately revealed by case studies and may be important influences on fertility behavior. Effects of family planning and social setting may be conditioned by contextual variables (e.g., island status as in Taiwan), or unique circumstances (e.g., coercion as in India), and distribution appears to have an effect of its own.     

Cross-national models of fertility,Family planning,and development: Testing for reciprocal effects

Cross-national models of fertility, family planning, and development commonly assume that there are no reciprocal effects between fertility and other variables in the model, and when path models are used, that there are no reciprocal or nonrecursive effects among any set of variables in the model. The present study tests for nonrecursiveness using two-wave panel data, and finds that nonrecursive effects are present among variables commonly used in models of fertility, family planning, and development. In addition, the pattern of relationships found has implications for the explanation of the relationship between mortality and fertility in demographic transition theory. Scott Menard is a research associate at the Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado, Campus Box 442, Boulder, Colorado, 80309-0442. His publications includePerspectives on Population with Elizabeth W. Moen (Oxford University Press, 1987) as well as several previous articles in SCID on fertility, family planning, and development.     

Whose business is your pancreas? Potential privacy problems in New York City's mandatory diabetes registry

This article examines a recent New York City health regulation that mandates the compilation and storage of individual medical data from nearly all diabetics in a centralized registry. The authors distinguish this novel registry from prior health registries and scrutinize its potential to compromise individual privacy. In order to address privacy and other concerns, the authors offer suggestions for changes to the current statutory framework of the registry that will also be useful when considering the creation of similar public health registries in other cities.     

Identification of the veterinary sedative medetomidine in combination with opioids and xylazine in Maryland

Public health, public safety, and forensic science personnel continue to face the emergence of new compounds into the drug market. While focus is often put on the detection of new analogs of known illicit drugs, monitoring the changes in cutting agents and other compounds can be equally as important. Over the last year, near real-time monitoring of the drug supply in Maryland has been completed through a public health–public safety partnership whereby residue from suspected drug packaging or used paraphernalia is collected and analyzed. Through this project, we have recently detected the presence of the veterinary sedative medetomidine in a small number of samples. The presence of medetomidine has been identified in both public health and law enforcement samples and in the presence of fentanyl and xylazine—another veterinary sedative that has been widely observed over the last year. While the rate at which medetomidine has been detected remains low, it is concerning and worthy of continued monitoring.