Minutes of the meeting held on 22nd May 2007
Mon, 17 September 2007
NUFFIELD COUNCIL ON BIOETHICS WORKING GROUP FORENSIC USE OF BIOINFORMATION: ETHICAL ISSUES
Minutes of the 4th meeting held on 22nd May 2007
Present
Working Group members: Professor Bob Hepple (Chair), Graham Cooke, Professor Søren Holm, Professor Graeme Laurie, Dr Bronwyn Parry, Professor Andrew Read and Professor Robin Williams
Secretariat: Dr Carole McCartney (Project Manager), Hugh Whittall, Katharine Wright, Harald Schmidt, Catherine Joynson and Caroline Rogers
1 The minutes of the third meeting that took place on March 16th were agreed with one amendment.
Introduction by the chair
2 The Chair welcomed members to the fourth, and final meeting of this Working Group.
Discussion paper
3 The Chair suggested that the peer review comments received should be addressed in relation to each chapter in turn. Following that, the Working Group could turn their attention to the recommendations contained in each chapter.
4 The general comments made by peer reviewers that were outstanding were considered. It was agreed that the section on ‘Crime control and due process’, presently in Chapter 3, be moved into Chapter 1 to give some further context to the paper.
5 It was agreed that the text was dense in places, and that the paper would undergo a further edit prior to publication to ensure that the paper was clear and properly presented. The present paper would also be made more ‘accessible’ by the Executive Summary. Where there were places in the paper where text could be broken up and perhaps more subtitles or bullet points introduced, this could also be done.
Chapter One
6 It was agreed that the Discussion Paper should, in discussing the Home Office proposals, include further discussion of vulnerable populations, and the possible impact upon them of arrest and sampling powers.
7 The Box detailing offence categories should be retained as this contained some useful information, though it must be pointed out later that the proposed changes in the Home Office proposals would in effect, make all offences ‘recordable’.
Chapter Two
8 With regard to Y-STR and Mitochondrial testing, it was asked whether further scientific detail was required. The further analysis itself may not raise new ethical issues, but there may be a difficulty with the construction of further databases, which would need to be mentioned in Chapter 7. In which case, there may be a need for a Box that goes into a little more detail about these, as well as LCN DNA analysis.
9 It was agreed that the first three chapters of the report should provide background information and the context for the rest of the Discussion Paper. As such, these chapters should not contain any recommendations. The recommendation in Chapter 2 regarding fingerprinting should then move to Chapter 5.
Chapter Three
10 This chapter had received a great deal of comment from peer reviewers. Much of the difficulty arose from trying to abbreviate complex philosophical theories. It was decided that the chapter needed some re-structuring. The Chair tabled a suggested new outline for the chapter, and this, along with suggested alternatives, was considered by the Working Group, and amendments made.
11 This chapter needed to make clear how the Working Group had tackled the ethical issues, and how this underpinned the recommendations made throughout the report. It needed to be iterated that the values being considered were not commensurable, and that no one value ‘trumped’ others, and that the Working Group were therefore attempting to balance competing interests and weigh values against one another.
Chapter Four
12 Amendments to the text were considered including mention of the new Home Office proposals.
13 The discussion of police powers should be linked to Chapter 3 and the justifications for the extension of the police sampling powers considered. The Paper should also mention that there was a need for clear statistical evidence, and not simply anecdotes of particular cases.
14 With regard to the position of minors, there was consideration of the current recommendation, and whether there was a clear position that could be reached with regard to the retention of bioinformation from minors.
15 The potential for a population-wide database needed some further consideration in the Discussion Paper, with potential problems highlighted, and the risk of ‘mission creep’ detailed.
Chapter Five
16 The Box on the Prosecutor’s Fallacy was clear, but should state clearly that it could be considered that any presentation of a DNA match that made the recipient of the evidence believe that s/he was hearing evidence of the likelihood of guilt or innocence, fell foul of the Prosecutor’s Fallacy. It should be noted that it is a contentious issue and why this is so.
Chapter Six
17 There was significant debate over recommendations concerning inferring ethnicity and whether this – used operationally - gave rise to the concerns about racism that were detailed in the Discussion Paper presently.
18 The revelation to the public of the racial breakdown of the NDNAD could mislead the public into believing that these proportions represented the relative proportions of criminality within different ethnic groups. This could be highly misleading. This was particularly so when the data was the police-generated racial grouping that were not representative of true ethnicity. However, monitoring of the NDNAD was essential to enable the assessment of any possible disproportionate impact upon different groups.
Chapter Seven
19 The details in the latest NDNAD Annual Report regarding the Ethics ‘group’ was still vague and this should be noted in the Discussion Paper.
20 There was agreement that the details of the Prüm Treaty were perhaps too detailed for the Discussion Paper to go into in any depth. Instead, the Discussion Paper could call for an overarching European governance structure.
Other matters
21 The wording of specific recommendations was considered and would be the focus of the next few weeks of drafting.
22 The Chair asked if there were any further points that had not been made in the Discussion Paper which members felt it should consider. It was commented that it was unfortunate, in light of their important role in the use of bioinformation, that members of the legal profession had not responded to the consultation, and were not able to send a representative to appear before the Working Group.
23 It was also asked whether the location of the new ‘home’ of the NDNAD within the newly established National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) should prompt comment within the Discussion Paper and this was agreed.
Production timetable
24 The Chair reminded the members of the production timetable for the Discussion Paper. Working Group members needed to send their revisions to the project manager. Following final editing, the draft paper would be distributed to the group, and also to the Council for the meeting of the Council on 26th June. After the Council meeting, final revisions will be made and the final version sent for production on or around the 2nd July.
Last Updated Mon, 17 September 2007