Friday, February 22, 2019

The Metamorphosis of the Arizona Rapid DNA Bill

Having swum through a Senate committee hearing, Arizona Senate Bill 1475 changed from an ungainly, large frog into a small, misconfigured tadpole. I know, that's backwards, but the legislative process is a world onto itself. Some of the differences between the original bill and the repeatedly amended version now on the legislature's website are in the table below. 1/

Original As Amended to 2/22/19
A new DPS database for everybody required to submit fingerprints to the state for most purposes Does not compel anyone to submit DNA samples. It establishes a new DPS for profiles from sexual assault kits.
Medical examiners to submit a DNA profile from all deceased individuals No provision specific to medical examiners
No provisions on crime-scene or sexual-assault kits A new DPS "database to retain DNA ID that is collected from a sexual assault kit"
Required "the sample to be processed within four hours using Rapid DNA identification" Requires "the sample to be processed using a Rapid DNA identification instrument that is approved by the [FBI] and that has the capacity to return results in less than two hours"

Given that police laboratories already analyze rape kits and place the male STR profiles in databases that are compared to databases of reference profiles from known individuals (in Arizona, from certain arrestees and convicted offenders), what is the point of this bill? Why create a new database when Arizona has local and statewide DNA identification databases that include data from rape kits already and that can be used in national as well as state and local searches?

The answers reside in the bill's single-minded insistence on "rapid DNA." ANDE, the company that has come out in support of the bill, advertises its microfluidic system for use with rape kits. But despite the wording in the bill, the FBI has not approved this application of the company's machine (or any others that it defines as "rapid DNA" instruments).

ANDE's machine may be as great as the company claims, even  when used with crime-scene and rape-kit samples. 2/ But until the FBI approves it for those uses, the profiles it generates from these samples cannot be part of the local, state, and federal DNA database system (colloquially called CODIS). If Arizona wants its police to rush into rapid DNA profiling for rape kits, it has to operate on its own, outside of the established framework. That is what Senator Livingston is proposing. 3/

Or is he? If FBI approval means approval for use with sexual-assault kits, the bill will have no effect until the FBI moves forward. But once the FBI approves "Rapid DNA" profiles from crime-scene samples, what purpose does a separate database serve?
From the FBI's Webpage on Rapid DNA
(emphasis in original)

Because known reference samples are taken directly from the individual, they contain sufficient amounts of DNA, and there are no mixed DNA profiles that would require a scientist to interpret them. For purposes of uploading or searching CODIS, Rapid DNA systems are not authorized for use on crime scene samples. All crime scene samples must be processed by an accredited forensic DNA laboratory that follows the FBI Quality Assurance Standards for Forensic DNA Testing Laboratories to be eligible for upload and/or search in CODIS.
...
Cheek swabs are ideal for Rapid DNA machines, as they contain large amounts of fresh DNA from one individual. Forensic samples vary widely, from the age, exposure and nature of the sample to the amount and quality of DNA it may contain. Most critically, forensic samples often contain mixtures of DNA from more than one individual that requires interpretation by a trained scientist. For these reasons, all crime scene samples must be processed by an accredited forensic DNA Laboratory that follows the FBI Quality Assurance Standards for Forensic DNA Testing Laboratories to be uploaded and/or searched in the CODIS system.
There are many challenges that must be overcome before the FBI can consider the use of Rapid DNA systems for crime scene sample analysis. The Bureau continues to assess how these challenges can be addressed to include monitoring enhancements to Rapid DNA technology. Among the major challenges is the requirement to determine the amount of DNA present in a sample (necessary to maximize the resulting quality of the DNA profile, assess for contamination, etc.) and the development of expert systems for crime scene sample analysis. 
Will police or DNA analysts have discretion to choose between the instrumentation singled out in the bill and other techniques? What if the rape-kit sample contains only a few spermatozoa and if other analytical procedures are more sensitive and would consume less of the sample? The latest version of the bill is less ambitious than the original, but no more intelligently designed.

UPDATE 6/20/19: An AP report on friction between ANDE and the Texas Forensic Science Commission 4/ noted that ANDE spokeswoman Annette Mattern "defended the company asking for 'performance parameters' in the proposed DNA database bill that excluded the company's chief rival, Thermo Fischer Scientific, saying it wouldn't have prevented competitors from ultimately meeting the same requirements." Although "Mattern and other ANDE representatives testified in support of the proposal," she said that the company "later asked to kill the legislation"  after "[s]ome senators questioned whether there were other advocates besides the company."

NOTES
  1. For a more complete list of differences, see https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/54leg/1R/summary/S.1475TPS_STRIKERMEMO_ASPASSEDCOMMITTEE.DOCX.htm
  2. For validation studies of microfluidic systems for rapid DNA analysis, see Jacklyn Buscaino et al., Evaluation of a Rapid DNA Process with the Rapidhit® ID System Using a Specialized Cartridge for Extracted and Quantified Human DNA, 34 Forensic Sci. Int’l: Genetics 116-127 (2018); Rosemary S. Turingan et al., 7 Investigative Genetics 2 (2016), DOI 10.1186/s13323-016-0033-7.
    At least one article (Aamer Alshehhi & Reena Roy, Generating Rapid DNA Profiles from Crime Scene Samples Commonly Encountered in the United Arab Emirates, 6 J. Forensic Research 296 (2015), doi:10.4172/2157-7145.1000296), appeared in a journal published by OMICS, which promises article processing, including peer review, within 21 days. Although reputable academic researchers prepared the article and presumably paid OMICS to publish it, the claim of serious peer review -- and even the names of the editors -- are questionable. OMICS also published an article prepared by a daily newspaper "mostly plagiarized from Aristotle, with every fourth or fifth word changed" to produce a "meaningless" result.Tim Spears, Owner of Canadian Medical Journals Publishes Fake Research for Cash, Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 22, 2016. The National Institutes of Health ... banned OMICS journals from indexing in PubMed Central [because of] 'serious concerns' about its practices." Esmé E Deprez & Caroline Chen, Medical Journals Have a Fake News Problem, Bloomberg Businessweek, Aug. 29, 2017
  3. The Arizona DPS already does some crime-scene processing with rapid DNA devices. Ariz. Dep't Pub. Safety, DNA Scientific Services, https://www.azdps.gov/organization/tsd/scientific-analysis/dna ("The Department of Public Safety was the first state agency to bring Rapid DNA analysis online as a law enforcement program where officers and crime scene technicians are trained in the use of the Rapid instrumentation. These Rapid operators can then run select types of crime scene samples outside of the laboratory in order to develop investigative leads more quickly than possible through normal crime laboratory analysis.").
  4. Paul J. Weber, APNewsBreak: Texas Says DNA Technology Jeopardizes Cases, ABC News, June 20, 2019, https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/apnewsbreak-texas-rapid-dna-supplier-jeopardizes-cases-63826207.
OTHER NEWS ON ARIZONA SB 1475
Posted by DH Kaye at 5:51 PM
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