DNA profiles to be deleted from police database
By BBC,
BBC News [United Kingdom]
| 02. 11. 2011
Hundreds of thousands of DNA profiles on the national database will be deleted, the government has announced.
Under the proposals, police will no longer be able to retain the DNA profile of most people who are arrested but not subsequently convicted.
At present, the National DNA Database retains the profiles of anyone arrested, irrespective of the outcome.
The changes will bring the law in England, Wales and Northern Ireland into line with Scotland.
Under the measures, set out in the coalition's Protection of Freedoms Bill, any adult convicted of a crime, or child convicted of a serious crime, will still have their DNA profile stored indefinitely in the national database.
But following a critical European Court of Human Rights ruling, there will be wide-ranging changes to when profiles can otherwise be kept.
If an adult is arrested for a serious offence, but not convicted, the profile can be kept for three years with a possible further two-year extension with court approval.
But most of those arrested for less serious offences will see their profile deleted if they are not subsequently...
Related Articles
By Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic | 03.18.2024
People are discovering the truth about their biological parents with DNA—and learning that incest is far more common than many think.
When Steve Edsel was a boy, his adoptive parents kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings in their bedroom closet...
By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 03.20.2024
There is a new most expensive drug ever—a gene therapy that costs as much as a Brooklyn brownstone or a Miami mansion, and more than the average person will earn in a lifetime.
Lenmeldy is a gene treatment for metachromatic...
By Carl Zimmer, The New York Times | 03.10.2024
In 1889, a French doctor named Francois-Gilbert Viault climbed down from a mountain in the Andes, drew blood from his arm and inspected it under a microscope. Dr. Viault’s red blood cells, which ferry oxygen, had surged 42 percent. He...
By Nick Paul Taylor, BioSpace | 03.14.2024
A U.K. watchdog balked at the cost-effectiveness of Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ CRISPR-based sickle cell disease therapy Thursday, recommending against funding the treatment unless uncertainties can be cleared up satisfactorily.
The U.K. became the first country to authorize Vertex’s Casgevy (exagamglogene...