Seattle police use family DNA, latest science to identify killer 52 years later

I'm sympathetic to that, and if someone wants to draw up legislation around the use of DNA without some kind of due process I'd be supportive of that idea.

But it would be very difficult to regulate the collection of DNA, given existing law on property rights + the fact we spew it everywhere we go in the form of spittle, skin cells, sweat, etc.

Also, the utility of DNA for the purposes in the article is only present when it's tied to a person. It would be a massive undertaking to plan out sifting through everyone's garbage 1 by 1 to build a DNA database.

There's much less of a privacy threat from someone collecting unknown garbage, and if you're not a suspect in a murder it's unlikely in the near future anyone will steal your trash specifically.

The article says that DNA from the clothing sample was sent to Parabon for analysis in July of 2016, and was used in a GEDmatch search at that time. There's nothing remarkable about my claim, it is right there in the article. Also it simply isn't possible to submit a CODIS profile to GEDmatch, they only accept SNP array data, the matching algorithms only work for dense SNP array data, and CODIS markers are not even SNPs, they are STRs.

I did not claim genetic information isn't "medical data". I said that 23andMe is not a "covered entity" under HIPAA. HIPAA only applies to "covered entities". Maybe you should say specifically what it is you think 23andMe is doing that is improper?

23andMe acquires, analyzes, stores, and trades in private medical data and does not comply with HIPAA in any way when doing so.

We both know that the DNA data you have is personal medical data. You have a PhD and are an executive at one of the largest companies in the world that is trading in DNA data so we both know you are very aware this is true.

> DNA from the clothing sample was sent to Parabon for analysis in July of 2016

We both agree the Galvin DNA sample was acquired and analyzed in 2002 as CODIS data and yielded no hits.

The article says "In July 2018, the suspect DNA from Galvin’s clothing was submitted to Reston" and then goes on to say "The suspect’s profile was reformatted and entered into GEDmatch". Parabon was not sent the actual original DNA from the underwear. Parabon was sent the DNA profile that was created in 2002. It was then reformatted by their data scientists so that they could do a cold hit search on GEDmatch. It yielded possible distant match on two individuals. They found a common ancestor, and created a descent tree of thousands of people, looking for people with a connection to Seattle. They exhumed one and did a modern microarray on that person, and compared that to the extremely sparse data from the 2002 test. They did not do a modern ~700k size microarray on the Galvin data.

You have professional colleagues at Parabon. Ask them. They will confirm what I have said.

Also as a professional biological statistician, you more than almost anyone know that cold hitting a sparse sample against a massive database, finding a possible remote connection, and then expanding the search from a 1800s possible ancestor to include all descendants who live in a large metropolitan area near the crime in a city many people migrated to over the decades is quite likely to find many matches and this sort of match is far from conclusive at all. In fact, you are even qualified to be an expert witness in such a case and testify regarding the actual odds.

We also both know that there are serious problems with testing amplified DNA samples on clothing that has been stored for 35 years and possibly handled by dozens of people.

We also know that even finding high quality single person DNA samples on clothing of a murder victim which exactly matches a suspect (which we did not do at all in this case here) does not prove that the person it matches was the killer and can not reasonably be deemed so without a trial in which a competent defense is presented and considered.