I have just finished watching Law & Order: SVU, one of my favourite cop shows. In tonight’s episode Detective Olivia Benson was framed for a bikie’s murder by her blood DNA having been placed on the murder weapon, a knife. Ultimately it was revealed that her saliva DNA, obtained from a diner item, was used to fake blood DNA. The forensic expert advised that a technique for doing so had been developed in Israel. The final scene of the episode had the bad guy saying that any biology undergraduate could falsify DNA, the implication being that it thereby put in question all blood DNA convictions and rendered ineffective the use of DNA in future criminal trials.
At that point my wife asked “Is that true?” I said I didn’t know and googled “fabricated DNA”. To my astonishment there were quite a number of articles on the topic, all to the above effect, some even containing lines spoken in the Law & Order episode.
Following is one article, from the New York Times science section, 17 August 2009, by Andrew Pollack. It can be viewed at:
