- Someone may have once told you that are a unique human being. This is true, because deep within your cells lies strings of organic molecules which have encoded on them the specific guidelines for how to make you look the way you do and make your body function the way it does. This molecule is DNA - deoxyribonucleic acid - is a long, double-stranded string that looks like a twisting ladder.
- The rungs of the DNA ladder are made up of a interlocking combination of two different components called nucleotides. The pairing of these nucleotides - adenine with thymine and guanine with cytosine - form into pairs in what geneticists call base pairs. It is the sequence of these base pairs that geneticists examine on a long section of DNA that forensic scientists employ in the practice of DNA fingerprinting.
- Each person has a unique sequence of base pairs that make up their DNA, so using DNA as an identity verification method seems to offer a positive contribution to society. For example, a strand of hair found at a crime scene could be sequenced to discover is a crime suspect was at the scene of a crime. DNA tests can also determine a child father if there is a dispute regarding paternity.
- Since it is still a new practice, DNA testing has yet to achieve a standardization of its methodology, which causes some law enforcement professional to feel cautious in accepting it as a total replacement for traditional identification methods like fingerprinting. On a more subtle level, critics suggest that the standard presumption underpinning the contemporary justice system, that people are innocent until they are prove guilty in a fair trial by a jury of their peers, could be undermined by the belief that, if the DNA matches, a person must be guilty.
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