By Selwyn Duke

DNA technology has been an invaluable crime-fighting tool, allowing law enforcement to identify both the innocent and the guilty.  And since it has been so welcomed by authorities, molecular biologist Tony Frudakis had every reason to believe that his great advance in suspect identification — called "DNAWitness" — would be well received.  But this was not the case.

The problem is not Frudakis’ technology, but other people’s ideology.  It’s not that his test has identified the wrong suspects, but that it identifies the wrong characteristic: Race.

DNAWitness can tell us definitively what a perpetrator’s race is just from a DNA sample, and it has already saved lives.  When the Baton Rouge Police Department and other agencies were searching for a serial killer in 2002, they initially hewed to an FBI profile and eyewitness accounts indicating that the suspect was probably a white male in a white pick-up truck. 

But this yielded no results.

When they sought the help of Frudakis, however, he was able to tell them the following,

"Your guy could be African-American or Afro-Caribbean, but there is no chance that this is a Caucasian."

This information allowed the authorities to focus their resources on the proper suspect pool, and they quickly identified and arrested a 34-year-old black man named Derrick Todd Lee as the killer.  Another DNA test then confirmed his guilt.

Since this triumph, Frudakis’ technology has seen others; yet, his company may very well go out of business.  Why?

Because of the blinders of ideology.

Our sick obsession with political correctness has made us recoil from anything that indicates racial differences, no matter how valid.  This problem just recently claimed James Watson, a geneticist, as a casualty, now it claims a genetic test.

The disordered thinking this is a result of is epitomized by one of the public officials quoted by Melba Newsome, author of the piece I cited in the first  paragraph.   Wrote Newsome,

Tony Clayton, a black man and a prosecutor who tried one of the Baton
Rouge murder cases, concedes the benefits of the test: ‘Had it not been
for Frudakis, we would still be looking for the white guy in the white
pickup.’ Nevertheless, Clayton says he dislikes anything that implies
we don’t all ‘bleed the same blood.’ He adds, ‘If I could push a button
and make this technology disappear, I would.’

I doubt this Clayton character understands how staggering his statements are.  He fears anything suggesting that we don’t all "bleed the same blood."  Well, I just hope that if Clayton needs a transfusion (maybe after being stabbed by a criminal who would have been caught had  law enforcement not been blinded by ideology), he just says, "Hey, Doc, just give me any blood you’ve got; I mean, I wouldn’t want to imply that we don’t all bleed the same!"

It’s idiotic.

It seems Clayton has never heard of different blood types.  Moreover, does he object to the routine tests that determine the sex of perpetrators? 

Obviously, since our blood contains our genetic profile, it goes without saying that we don’t all "bleed the same blood" any more than we all have the same fingerprints.

I’ll also note that Clayton and the rest of his ilk didn’t seem to mind criminal science’s determinations about race when the profile indicated the perpetrator was a white guy.   And it might be very tempting to play the race card here and label Clayton a bigot, but that would be intellectually sloppy.  The truth is a bit more nuanced than that.   Because more than anything else, the man’s mind is in an ideological straightjacket.

Ideology can become like a religion, and when someone places ideology ahead of Truth, he’ll rationalize the latter away when it conflicts with his ideology.  This is why Clayton said he’d like to just push a button and make this technology go away. 

He fears it. 

This is because it threatens his world view.

But his thinking is the true threat.  Think about what would’ve happened if he would have had his way and this technology never would have existed.  Derrick Todd Lee would have been on the streets for longer — he might still be there.

And more innocent people would have died.

I suppose Clayton considers this a reasonable price to pay for the preservation of his errant agenda.   I guess the additional victims would just be sacrifices slain on the altar of political correctness.

You can really feel safe at night knowing that people with such singular devotion to ensuring domestic tranquility have the reins of the criminal-justice system.