Hardly a week goes by without a mention of DNA’s contribution to criminal justice. Last week Sandip Patel was convicted of killing a prostitute near Baker Street 30 years ago: DNA belatedly proved that his hairs were caught in her ring. A few days before, a double murderer, Colin Pitchfork, was controversially granted a parole hearing 36 years after being the defendant in ‘the first case of its kind in Britain to use DNA profiling’, as the Times put it.
Only that’s wrong. Colin Pitchfork was not the first person in Britain to be convicted with DNA; he was the first person in the world. The story of how DNA profiling was invented and then applied to solving crimes is a truly remarkable, entirely British success story. We seem to have forgotten this, perhaps because of the modesty of the inventor, Sir Alec Jeffreys.
Pitchfork was not the first person in Britain to be convicted with DNA: he was the first person in the world
Without Jeffreys’s insight, it might not have happened until years later.
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