Scientists in Leicester are marking the 20th anniversary of the invention of genetic fingerprinting. The breakthrough was made accidentally by Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys at the city's university on 10 September 1984. Since then, the technique has been used to trap criminals, identify victims of war, settle paternity disputes, and prove the claims of clones like Dolly. It has also led to a national database in the UK of 2.5 million genetic profiles from convicted criminals. It is a development Sir Alec has some qualms about, and he opposes the practice, approved by a court in 2002, of retaining DNA samples from suspects who are acquitted. "My view is, that is discriminatory," he said. "It works on a premise that the suspect population, even if innocent, is more likely to offend in the future." He would prefer to see a database that included all individuals, with strict guidelines on what information could be stored. The professor would not allow sensitive personal details such as a person's medical history or ethnic origin to be mined from the data. Sir Alec refers to the time when his lab stumbled across the technique as a "eureka moment". He and colleagues had been studying genetic variation and how it might be used to track hereditary disease through families.
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