Osama Bin Laden is dead, or so we think. After the shooting of Bin Laden, he was photographed and identified by his wife. John Brennan, assistant of homeland security, said “we can say with 99.9% confidence that this was Bin Laden.” A huge controversy rose. People wondered why they can’t be 100% positive, if they are so sure. His DNA analysis took less than 24 hours and in order to identify him, they compared his DNA to his relatives. The DNA test looks at short tandem repeat sequences and there are more shared repeating patterns in close relatives. However, Bin Laden’s DNA was considered a 99.9% confident, but his DNA was compared to his half sister! Since Bin Laden has no full siblings, his DNA results may be misleading.
This article relates to the United States in particular. It touches on insecurities society has on the confidence of Bin Laden’s death. There is a possibility, very unlikely, that the body does not belong to Bin Laden, however, there is a high probability that that is not the case. Also, it is important for society to understand that DNA testing is never 100% accurate/confident and that there is always room for error.
This article was well written and informative, however I would have liked to see the author put a positive perspective on Bin Laden’s death, rather than the concerning/no hope comment at the end. The article’s mood seemed pretty hopeless in terms of ever being confident in the body’s identification.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/forensics/osama-bin-ladens-dna-how-sure-is-ninety-nine-point-nine-percent-sure-5680593
No comments:
Post a Comment