The jury’s in?
Monday afternoon I spent several languid hours in the jury pool room at my local courthouse. As I sat there with my thumb up my butt watching a stirring video hosted by Charles Kuralt, it occurred to me that jury duty is really just a population database in action. Potential jurors gather and swear on Bibles just as a population under study might gather for en masse consent. Like research subjects, jurors are usually promised nothing other than very modest compensation ($12 + free coffee–woo-hoo!) plus a chance to do their civic duty and benefit society as a whole. In many cases (like mine on Monday), nothing comes of the experience–people are sent home with a parking voucher and a promise that they won’t be bothered again for at least two years. Some folks are resentful of jury duty, some bored (ahem), and some have legitimate emergencies they have to attend to that preclude them from serving. But no one I’ve met says, “Jury duty is fascist. They can put me in jail but I ain’t going.”
The analogy is hardly perfect: can we imagine compelling able-bodied people to give up their DNA/tissue/cells the way we compel them to show up at the courthouse by force of law? Um…no. Sounds like an absurd and fairly creepy scenario. But short of legislation, could at least some of the same civic spirit attached to jury service be infused into scientific research of all stripes, particularly if more scientists were willing to share results and/or let their subjects see behind the curtain?
I work as an Assistant Professor in the Duke University Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy (although this site and its content are my own).
In 2007 I became the fourth subject in Harvard geneticist George Church's Personal Genome Project. As the PGP moves forward, I am chronicling the dawn of personal genomics, that is, people obtaining their genomic information for whatever reason(s) and figuring out what to do with it. I am interested in the relevant technologies and especially the attendant privacy and other ethical/legal/social issues.
This blog may also discuss some of my non-genome interests or, to paraphrase Dwight Yoakam, "Guitars, Cadillacs, hillbilly music, etc etc."
The header image comes from the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's multimedia performance piece, "Ferocious Beauty: Genome."
November 7th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Able-bodied people are compelled to give up their DNA/tissue/cells in precisely this way when they join the U.S. Military. The DOD DNA Registry begun in earnest in the early 1990s, is now nearly comprehensive, and although “donors” are afforded some rights of petition to have their samples destroyed after their service, on the whole they intend to keep the samples up to 50 years. That’s a lot of people:
http://www.afip.org/Departments/oafme/dna/
And check out this pdf of a powerpoint presentation made by a Brion C. Smith for the Department of Defense DNA Registry: http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/plans/3AFDIL.pdf
It includes references to the collection of at DNA samples from at least 7,000 “detainees”, who one might presume were not asked for permission. Though the DNA Registry was established for remains identification, you can see from the presentation that in their 2005-2010 plans, the DOD sees a somewhat broader role for the Registry. An excerpt, from near the end:
- The premier forensic DNA laboratory in the world combined
with a creative information technology capacity to provide
global connectivity and database management
- Providing services to DoD and non-DoD federal agencies in
support of personnel accounting, defense, law enforcement,
humanitarian, national security and intelligence missions
- 97% contractor staff with ability expand and contract
- All activities in leased facilities
- The whole is greater than the sum of the parts – fragmentation
would leave the nation less prepared for a major event.
November 7th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
Thanks, D. It seems they want it both ways: I think I’ve alluded to it elsewhere, but there was a story in the LA Times by Karen Kaplan (18 August 2007) where the US military was fingered as being perhaps the leading practitioner of genetic discrimination in this country. Basically, if you have a congenital condition, the army doesn’t want to be on the hook for your medical care.