April 22, 2003
Would You Like To Learn the Truth?... Let's take five with Moira Gunn. This is "Five Minutes".
By now, you've heard that Laci Peterson's body and that of her infant son have washed up on the shores of San Francisco Bay. There is no doubt that it's Laci and young Conner, thanks to the accuracy of science. While this identification was expected, it took a number of days to precisely confirm it, and these were clearly excruciating days for Laci's family and friends.
When the remains were discovered, state criminalists warned there may be insufficient "usable DNA" to accurately test them, and the reactions of many were those of puzzlement: How could the body of a woman alive just a few short months ago lack sufficient DNA for testing?
Here is precisely where our expectations of the power of DNA, a constant now at murder trials and in television dramas, fail us.
But it was not a failure of science; it was a failure of expectations.
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The science of DNA simply gives us a reason to deduce the truth following a data match, and to arrive at that truth requires technology. Here's where things get tricky, since every technology has its limits. Take your car. It runs on gasoline. It doesn't run on pineapple juice. And so it is with the technology of DNA tests.
The most precise testing procedures today use what is called "nuclear DNA," and it's extracted from bones and tissues in good condition. Another less precise testing technology uses mitochondrial DNA, and since you inherit this type of DNA from your mother, it says nothing about your father. To make the match, you'd need samples from your mother, or a shared maternal relative.
The reality is testing for DNA is as much determining the quality of the source samples, as it is matching the results. And since the samples are almost never perfect, this new science has its hands full.
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The testing for Laci Peterson and her baby was conducted by a new effort in the State of California called the Missing Persons DNA Program. Funding started for it in 2001 with $2 collected from every death certificate issued in the state.
The idea was to collect samples of DNA from the families of missing persons, as well as DNA samples from unidentified human remains. To give it some extra bite, an additional law was passed requiring California coroners to take DNA samples from all "unidentified deceased persons" specifically for testing.
While the program is just winding up, it's already received 40 DNA samples from California coroners, and collected 100 samples from the relatives of missing persons, all hoping - yet not hoping - to find a match.
But this is just the beginning. And while the concept and the work itself is much needed, its mission is bittersweet. This is a situation wherein no one really wins. If a deceased loved one is never found, there is always the grinding hope that he or she is still out there somewhere, alive. If a family does receives a confirmation, then the ultimate pain finally sets in.
The survivors of such situations repeatedly tell us that knowing is better than not, but theirs is a choice of simply two different kinds of hell.
As science is the search for truth, it fulfills its promise here. But there's no getting around it: this is a cold truth, at best.
I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.
