The History and Future Trends of ART Medicine and Law

The Assisted Reproductive Technologies (“ART”) have resulted in over eight million births to date, heralding remarkable advances in reproductive medicine with a transformational impact on both medicine and law. The effects have been acutely felt on the modern family, as well as on a myriad of areas of legal practice—including Family Law, Estate Planning, Contract, Health, Constitutional, Criminal, Discrimination, Tort Law and, for international arrangements, Immigration and Citizenship laws. This article examines the historical context, present impact, and future trends of ART and the Law. Its purpose is to help better understand these unique developments in order to help law and policy makers harness and craft the policies and frameworks that will be needed to monitor, shape and guide these remarkable possibilities for participants, professionals, law and society.     

Correlation of paternity index with probability of exclusion and efficiency criteria of genetic markers for parternity testing

The statistical correlation between the chance of paternity exclusion and paternity index is explored to derive a new criterion of judging the efficiency of an array of genetic determinations for parentage diagnosis. The theoretical basis is illustrated with allele frequency data on genetic markers used in a paternity testing protocol to examine the possible effects of changing the genetic systems on the prospect of identifying fathers by genetic markers.     

Staphylococcal scalded skin syndrome mimicking child abuse by burning

Determining the cause for the sudden death in young adults tends to be complex and difficult. Two cases of death of young people were autoptically investigated who died suddenly while carrying out their hobbies (a 22-year-old male musician and a 20-year-old female dancer). In both cases neither the police investigation, the autopsy, nor the toxicological investigations gave any relevant results. However, when investigating the histology fatty and fibrotic tissue in the right ventricle of the myocardium were found, whereas the myocytes proved to be degenerated--typical for arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC). It is important to consider the possibility of heart rhythm failure if a clear reason for sudden death in young adults cannot be detected. Heart rhythm failure often involves the genetic background of the case, which suggests that genetic analysis should be carried out as a supportive means of diagnostics.     

Use of Eucalyptus DNA profiling in a case of illegal logging

Eucalyptus is grown world-wide for paper pulp, solid wood, and other industries. Theft or illegal cutting of the trees causes hardship to owners of plantations and countries whose economies rely on the sale and export of eucalyptus products. Unfortunately, many of these crimes go unpunished due to lack of forensic evidence.Over 1200 short tandem repeat (STR) markers have been identified in the genomes of genus Eucalyptus and related species. However, their importance and utility in aiding forensic investigations of wood theft have not been explored. This study evaluated nine STRs for diversity and applied them to a case involving suspected wood theft.As expected, three dinucleotide STR markers showed greater variability but resulted in harder to interpret profiles. Four STR tetranucleotide markers evaluated in this study were found to contain additional repeat structures (dinucleotide or trinucleotide) that enhanced their variability but resulted in profiles with peaks at multiple stutter positions and heterozygote peak imbalance. The most promising STR markers were EGM37 and EMBRA 1374. Though less variable, they yielded robust and reproducible DNA profiles.All nine STR markers were applied to a case involving suspected wood theft. Samples were collected from seized wood and from remaining stumps in a plantation. No DNA match was found, thus eliminating the evidence samples as having originated from the forest. Dendrochronology analysis also resulted in an exclusion. This case study represents the first report using STR markers in any eucalyptus species to provide DNA evidence in a case of suspected wood theft.     

中国法医学会物证专业委员会法医DNA分析的若干建议

中国法医学会法医物证学专业委员会与国际法医遗传学会中文专委会于2006年10月在成都召开学术会议。我们的讨论强调有必要将国际法医遗传学会的信息及时传递到中国。因此,按照国际法医遗传学会的指南,我们推荐混合斑分析,法医DNA数据库及新遗传标记选择标准供同行参考。     

ISFG: Recommendations on biostatistics in paternity testing

The Paternity Testing Commission (PTC) of the International Society for Forensic Genetics has taken up the task of establishing the biostatistical recommendations in accordance with the ISO 17025 standards and a previous set of ISFG recommendations specific to the genetic investigations in paternity cases. In the initial set, the PTC recommended that biostatistical evaluations of paternity are based on a likelihood ratio principle – yielding the paternity index, PI. Here, we have made five supplementary biostatistical recommendations. The first recommendation clarifies and defines basic concepts of genetic hypotheses and calculation concerns needed to produce valid PIs. The second and third recommendations address issues associated with population genetics (allele probabilities, Y-chromosome markers, mtDNA, and population substructuring) and special circumstances (deficiency/reconstruction and immigration cases), respectively. The fourth recommendation considers strategies regarding genetic evidence against paternity. The fifth recommendation covers necessary documentation, reporting details and assumptions underlying calculations. The PTC strongly suggests that these recommendations should be adopted by all laboratories involved in paternity testing as the basis for their biostatistical analysis.     

Paternity probability when a relative of the father is an alleged father

When scientists use DNA evidence in court, coancestry effects such as population structure and relatedness are usually ignored. In paternity cases, only if a particular man has the child's paternal allele at a certain locus, can he not be excluded in the paternity dispute. However, it is certainly true that close relatives will be far more likely to have the child's paternal allele than will random members of the reference population. In particular, the probability that the true father's brother has the paternal allele is very much greater than that for any other relationship. In this paper, the authors describe a method for inference in a case where the true father may be a relative of the alleged father. This paper also reports that most current methods overstate the probability that the alleged father is the father.     

Genetic risk and the birth of the somatic individual

This paper considers the implications of the rise of the new molecular genetics for the ways in which we are governed and the ways in which we govern ourselves. Using examples of genetic screening and genetic discrimination in education, employment and insurance, and a case study of debates among those at risk of developing Huntington's Disease and their relatives, we suggest that some of the claims made by critics of these new developments are misplaced. While there are possibilities of genetic discrimination, the key event is the creation of the person 'genetically at risk'. But genetic risk does not imply resignation in the face of an implacable biological destiny: it induces new and active relations to oneself and one's future. In particular, it generates new forms of 'genetic responsibility', locating actually and potentially affected individuals within new communities of obligation and identification. Far from generating fatalism, the rewriting of personhood at a genetic level and its visualization through a 'molecular optic' transforms the relations between patient and expert in unexpected ways, and is linked to the development of novel 'life strategies', involving practices of choice, enterprise, self-actualization and prudence in relation to one's genetic make-up. Most generally, we suggest, the birth of the person 'genetically at risk' is part of a wider reshaping of personhood along somatic lines and a mutation in conceptions of life itself.     

Applications and extensions of subpopulation theory: a caseworkers guide

This paper extends the calculation of conditional probabilities from those given by Balding and Nichols to casework situations where a series of possible DNA types are possible. Such situations may occur when a sample is identified containing a mixture of DNA from two or more people or where extra information can be determined about the subpopulation under consideration by analysis of additional samples. Using this approach, the error in the estimated likelihood ratios is expected to reduce as the number of additional individuals typed from the subpopulation increases.