Ian Baxter
1/8/16
Forensics
Current Event 13
Review
The article that I read for this assignment discussed the negative effects of familial DNA searches, and how they can impact one’s life. While many newspapers cover the success stories of familial DNA searches, it is very rare to see any coverage on any sort of failure regarding familial DNA searches; however, failure regarding familial DNA searches is much more common than most people think. This article opened with the story of Michael Usry, the man who was wrongly accused of committing the 1996 murder of Angie Dodge many years before. The man who they had incarcerated for this crime was discovered to not actually be the murder after DNA testing, and Michael Usry was forced into a car and forced to take a mouth swab so his DNA could be tested. As it turned out, he was wrongly accused of committing the crime and essentially had his life put on hold for 33 days while his DNA was tested and compared to the DNA found at the crime scene. The point of the article is to mention the extreme risks that familial DNA testing pose, and how they can actually ruin someone’s life. Michael Usry is just a minor example of this testing, but it is not uncommon for people to have to put their lives on hold for such situations.
This article is very significant because it stresses the risks of a very common practice in forensic science today – familial DNA testing. It is important for articles to be written and information to ultimately be spread about the dangers of such practices, and it is important that it is understood that such common practices have downside, and ultimately, it is important to actually know the downsides of such practices.
I thought that the article overall was very well written, and that the author did an excellent job at balancing storytelling and stressing the important issue at hand. Rather than just cite examples of when familial DNA testing has resulted badly, he focused on specific examples, and then discussed how this system ultimately breaks down and affects peoples’ lives.
Works Cited
Koerner, Brendan I. "Your Relative’s DNA Could Turn You Into a Suspect."Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, n.d. Web. 08 Feb. 2016.
1 comment:
I thought Ian did a great job on this review as there were many aspects of the review that i thought were presented extremely well.
One aspect of the review that I liked was how Ian organized it. He organized the review so it was easy to read and understand what information he was trying to tell us. Another aspect of the review that I liked was how Ian only put in important information instead of overloading us with too much irrelevant information. The last aspect of the review that I enjoyed was when Ian explained the significance of the article. It let me understand why he choose and thought this article was so important which let me understand the article that much more.
ALthough I thought the review was great, there were some areas that could have been improved. For one, I believed Ian could have put a little more detail into why he thought the article was so important. This would've let me understand why he thought the article was relevant to our forensics class. And lastly, I thought that if Ian were to give just a little more information on why HE thought the article was important, It would've let us understand even more why this article is so important.
In all, I really enjoyed reading this review and article and learned a lot doing so; for example, I learned how familiar DNA can ruin someones life and cause a jury to convict the wrong person of committing a certain crime
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