Genes in Police Files

cientists might roll their eyes when they hear concerns about DNA fi nger-printing evidence. What’s all the fuss? After all, it doesn’t seem to matter whether the chances we have the wrong person for a crime are one in a million or one in a bil-lion, a DNA match or mismatch seems clear enough, and the more DNA profi les we have in the data banks the better off we ought to be. The proliferation of CSI forensic drama series on television makes the use of DNA evidence all the more routine. In Genetic Jus-tice, however, Sheldon Krimsky and Tania Simoncelli present a clear and convincing case for caution—one surprisingly balanced despite strong infl uence from the American Civil Liberties Union. The book offers a lucid and accurate pre-sentation of DNA forensic technology that will be useful to any nonspecialist. It also pro-vides an informative discussion of the Ameri-can legal canon relevant to the collection of DNA information along with a detailed com-parative study across the United Kingdom