NJ police used baby DNA to investigate crimes, lawsuit claims
By Corin Faife,
The Verge
| 08. 29. 2022
New Jersey police may have used blood samples taken from babies to investigate crimes, according to public defenders in the state.
According to a lawsuit filed by the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender (OPD), the practice came to light after a case in which New Jersey State Police successfully subpoenaed a testing lab for a blood sample drawn from a child. Police then performed DNA analysis on the blood sample that reportedly linked the child’s father to a crime committed more than 25 years ago.
The suspect then became a client of the OPD, which alerted the office to the techniques used to identify the man. The lawsuit, filed jointly by the OPD and the New Jersey Monitor, now seeks to compel the state of New Jersey to disclose information on the full extent of the practice.
All babies born in the state of New Jersey are required to have a blood sample drawn within 48 hours as part of a mandatory testing program that screens them for 60 different disorders. These samples are processed in a...
Related Articles
By Carl Zimmer, The New York Times | 10.20.2026
For the first time, scientists say they have used viruses designed by artificial intelligence to treat a human patient.
Researchers announced on Tuesday that they had administered the virus, known as a phage, to a patient suffering from a deadly...
By Noah Fromson, HealthLab | 10.19.2026
Gene therapy is no longer the future of medicine — it’s reality. Treatments that replace, silence or edit genes are already changing clinical care.
There are more than 6,000 rare genetic disorders but only a fraction currently have treatable targets...
By Roxanne Khamsi, The Atlantic | 10.16.2026
In recent months, news came out about several distressing cases that have underscored the risks of gene therapy, which delivers DNA to a patient’s cells to treat disease. All of these cases have one thing in common that’s not apparent...
By Rebecca Roberts, The Scientist | 10.11.2026
Heritable genome editing in human embryos is once again under intense scrutiny after the publication of an opinion piece in Trends in Genetics at the end of last month.1 In the paper, Cathy Tie, the founder and chief...
