This treatise addresses one of the most important questions in British modern social ethics, the proposed encroachment upon the privacy of the citizenry by compiling a compulsory, biologically based, invasively identificative DNA databank.¹
After describing the nature of DNA, I ask if it is ethical to insist that samples of this most personal of all human substances be extracted from our living bodies and filed as an adjunct to the criminal justice system? Do the implied benefits of improved judicial procedures, a better police-force and increased communal security determine NDNAD’s moral goodness? Does our privacy matter more? What are the drawbacks? Do objective universal ethical rules actually exist? Personally I think not, but nevertheless strive to provide a fair representation and carefully compare and contrast traditionalist lines of thinking within the assumptive terminological paradigm in which the public debate is usually cast. As well as presenting the arguments for and against the introduction of such a controversial mandatory protective system, I introduce a third line of enquiry, which addresses the root ‘ethical’ question:
What are the well-springs of morals? What makes we humans even bother to spend £182 million2 to pay for a NDNAD to protect our fellow citizens in the first place? Why worry about others?

1.Henceforth referred to by the acronym NDNAD.
2.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_National_DNA_Database.

The entire length of the three billion base pairs human DNA string is referred to as the human genome. The divisional sequences are euphemistically described by the media as: ‘genetic maps, blueprints, bar-codes and scripts,’ etc. Sequencing is by highly specialised microscopically developed, chemically treated slides, or photographs of biologic samples found in skin-flakes, saliva, semen, blood, hair and other human bodily substances.

Researchers are unravelling some of biology's most complicated processes: foetal cell development, genetical coordination, disease predisposition and how the brain works. Crime-scene specimens are cross-checked with the computerised biologic data of former offenders and people arrested but subsequently released without charge. The ethical implications of the latter will be discussed in a later section.

Successful sequencing has provided police and government scientists with a virtual identificational ‘bar–code’ of the individual human being which helps the police-form and emigration authorities to:

1. Identify potential suspects by matching DNA left at crime scenes 2. The exoneration of innocent persons wrongly accused of crimes 3. The correct identification of crime, accident and tragedy victims 4. Establishing true paternity and other disputed family relationships 5. Identifying endangered and protected species for wildlife officials

Criminologist Simon Cole of the University of California says as many a thousand or more unknown identification errors occur every year in the US alone, with many people wrongfully imprisoned due to erroneous fingerprint matching. Post conviction DNA re-evaluation procedures are correcting those judicial abuses. [1] (Cole.2005)

Before leaving the our discussion of what constitutes DNA, I must first mention important limitations of DNA evidence as provided by the forensic service.

Crime-scene DNA samples only tell us that the person was present at that location sometime earlier.

2. It would be possible to plant somebody’s DNA material at a crime scene. (cf. the ‘bloody glove’ in the notorious O.J.Simpson case.) [2] (Petrocelli & Knobler.)

3. DNA present within or upon a rape victim’s body only provides evidence of personal contact, it does not prove rape occurred.

I have outlined the scientific and technical realities of the human genome, what it is, how it works, and ways in which it can be recorded in cybernetic retrieval systems. The controversial ethical or moral questions of privacy. Should such extremely private and personal material be stored on such a database at all? What guarantees would we have that such important data would be meticulously administrated and recorded with names and addresses of the donor cross-checked and verified.

In September 2007, Lord Justice Sir Stephen Sedley, one of the UK's most senior judges, said that the whole population's DNA profile, including every UK visitor's profile, must be added to the NDNAD.

‘It also means that a great many people who are walking the streets and whose DNA would show them guilty of crimes, go free.’ [3] (Sedley. 2007)

In a recent poll by BBC's Panorama programme, 66% of interviewees were in favour of a universal DNA database where everyone over the age of 18 would be required to give a sample. [4] (BBC. Panorama.2007)

Somewhat predictably the government seems to be either ignoring or is unaware of this two thirds in favour public opinion, for a spokesman reported Gordon Brown as saying:

‘To expand the database would create 'huge logistical and bureaucratic issues' and civil liberty concerns.’ [5] (Brown. 2007)

Shadow home secretary David Davis called for a Parliamentary debate and described the system for adding people to the database as arbitrary and erratic.

Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said there was:

‘No earthly reason' why someone who has committed no crime should be on the database.’ [6] (Clegg. 2007)




Tony McNulty MP Minister for Security, Counter-terrorism, Crime and Policing, said there were no plans to introduce DNA profiling for everyone in the UK, but 'no-one ever says never.'
He said Lord Justice Sedley's idea:

'has logic to it - but I think he's underestimating the practical issues, logistics, civil and ethical issues that surround it.' [7] (McNulty. 2007)

This debate has been overtaken by the recent national announcement that a police investigation has been launched into how Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs lost child benefit records relating to 25 million people. [8] (Darling. AOL News 2007)
Many say however that the criminal fraternity and terrorist gangs will soon develop methods of removing DNA evidence from crime scenes.

2. 2. NDNAD and The War Against Terrorism
We British were quite happy to have a National Identity Card System during the 1939 – 1945 World War (I still have my card) So what is it about the idea of a criminological application of a much superior NDNAD that many people find unappealing? If in wartime proof of identity is acceptable, why is it not acceptable now when our political leaders are proclaiming an international ‘war against terrorism? Many railways, public buildings and transport systems have been attacked in European capitals, in America and further afield and thousands of lives lost. Ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair declared in March 2004 combatting the threat of terrorism requires:

‘the International community to be able to use pre-emptive force.’[9] (Blair. 2004)

Practically any newspaper we care to open nowadays tells us that the terrorist threat is ‘home grown’ and ’in our midst.’ Our police will certainly be hamstrung in identifying the de facto or would-be assassins without a NDNAD. The absence of such an essential tool of detective work will restrict that ‘pre-emptive force’ of which Blair and Bush speaks. Will not such an imposed curtailment be ‘immoral’ in view of the public slaughter that such an omission will help engender?


If no objections are raised on ‘moral grounds’ when paederast child killers or rapists are being hauled before the courts, why should we object to DNA samples being supplied by law-abiding citizens to avoid even greater body-counts of innocent victims?

‘But,’ reply the objectors with some justification:

‘Knowing human nature, how long will it be before some home secretary or chief constable, perhaps even a junior member of the security services or police, arranges the planting of some DNA from one of the usual suspects at a crime scene? With adequate time and enough grievance, or under political and public pressure because there have been no arrests, it would not be very difficult to carry out such an act.


And now to the question of inappropriate disclosure which I deal with more fully in this next section.


2. 3. Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?
Discussion of the pros and cons is dwarfed by the three most important questions of all:


(1) Who are those people who will have legal access to this information?
(2) Who will have the custody and maintain the integrity of the records?
(3) And perhaps most importantly of all - Quis Custodiet ipsos Custodes?

SUPPORT OR OPPOSITION?
Attitudes to a compulsory NDNAD can be boiled down to three positions.

The Three Variables of Public Opinion

(1) THE SUSPICIOUS BUT APPROVING ENTHUSIAST
‘I reluctantly support a NDNAD because of its overwhelming criminological benefits. I have nothing to fear or hide from the police, because I am a law-abiding citizen and always have been. I would be suspicious of the police themselves and anybody else who would operate and control the system, in case they abuse their position, which is a virtual certainty. I would not trust the motives of anybody who refused to supply a sample, though I would feel sorry for the refuseniks, because they would be arrested more frequently, whereas the people like me who are recorded on the database will be excluded automatically. Objectors without alibis would always be under suspicion until arrested and a sample was obtained forcibly. They will soon agree to be included – you can be damn sure of that.’

(2) THE INTELLIGENT INDIVIDUALIST OBJECTOR
‘I object to the creation of a NDNAD and find the idea a damned cheek. I do not want to share my DNA. I am an intensely private person. If I get AIDS I don’t want everybody to know. Crime is a police problem – not mine. I live in the countryside – far away from urban crime. I do not trust the authorities anyway. If people get raped, attacked and murdered – that is their hard luck – it has been going on for centuries. I don’t want insurance companies getting hold of my health records and amending my cover, or my employment, marital or credit history becoming public knowledge. I do not want my ex-husband to trace me. I do not want unauthorised phoney therapeutic companies to get hold of my details and pester me to buy orthopaedic beds and stair-lifts. Just go away and leave me alone!’

(3) THE THEORETICALLY FAVOURABLE BUT DISTRUSTFUL OBJECTOR
‘Securely administrated a NDNAD would be marvellous for fighting crime and for many other beneficial things too – but the risks are far too great. I will never volunteer a sample of my DNA to be stored. All the discussion is dwarfed by the most important question of all - Quis Custodiet ipsos Custodes? I wouldn’t trust the police as far as I could throw them.’

For me there are no ethical or moral questions raised by the NDNAD proposal. Such shared views are often doctrinally based and should really be characterised as opinion-driven orthopraxis or privately perceived prescriptive feelings about ‘ideal ways of behaving. The problems of a NDNAD are administrative – not moral. The mere fact that computers would exist containing details of the biological material of over 60.5 million Britons does not mean that such a thing is moral or immoral. I agree with Hume who argued against a moral realism which regards ‘moral properties’ as ‘residing in the external world.’ [10] (Hume:84 pp. 507-527)

Is this desire to keep our innocent fellow citizens free from injury or loss a moral act of benevolent unilateral altruism? Are the expensive judges and lawyers, the costly penological establishments and technologically equipped police forces financed by the taxpayer out of affection and concern for his/her neighbours?

Would the dissenter continue to oppose or disapprove of such a voluntary or compulsory retrieval system if their own ’personal’ information and details of their own family and perhaps friends were not included? I reintroduce this question as an interrogatory backcloth, because such a refusal has implications for the very meaning of unilateral and reciprocal altruism, and raises the question of whether altruism is merely a form of egoistically motivated mutual backscratching?

In fairness to the objectors, perhaps those who see a NDNAD as damaging to ‘the person’ are themselves acting altruistically towards the public at large by opposing it?

4. 2. Altruism and the Love that Dare not Speak its Name

The proposition that ‘moral’ and ‘ethical rights’ such as ‘privacy’ exist as objectively true conditions, or ‘desirable states of affairs,’ has become habituated in the psyche of the masses. To say that personal information stored on a database constitutes a ‘moral’ intrusion upon a supposed abstraction called ‘privacy’ is more important to the individual and society than apprehending murderers, rapists and other criminals plus the additional benefits of a NDNAD is simply to emote one’s opinion that databases are not a good idea.

An egoistical love of the self (the last taboo?) is the natural default evolutionary precondition of all humans – those that lack selfish motivation get zapped and get genetically eliminated by the evolutionary process. Socialisation (the spreading of the survivalist NDNAD [best-bet-net?) associates the sensibility of the average citizen with a form of behaviour which is altogether foreign to it – reciprocal altruism – the union card to inclusion in an interactional group survival operation similar to fish-shoaling or chimpanzee mutual grooming. The supposed moral authority pedalled by the intelligent weak and wealthy with most to lose, (vide Nietzsche.) Opinions, feelings and worries having been recast as the more weightier-sounding ‘morals’ are adopted, absorbed and promulgated sociologically by contemporary society, via the institutions of education, the law, the church, and the media, who often employ ‘moral shame’ as a weapon of belittlement with which to perpetuate the general sociological milieu.

I reject the notion of ‘ethics’ and ‘morals’ as mere emotional sensation and instinctual feelings. My conclusion is necessarily eliminativistically metaethical. I strongly believe that a suitable NDNAD should be compiled, assiduously maintained and strictly controlled, in order to strengthen the criminal justice system and help the forces of law and order apprehend terrorist offenders and monitor the citizenship and legal status of foreign nationals. This is particular important whilst the west undergoes the current period of terrorism and mass economic migration from the third world.

Scott and Seglow refer intriguingly in their latest book ‘Altruism,’ to Blum’s claim (which echoes Hume’s sentiment-based account of morality, and Axel Hägerstrõm’s ‘morals as fictions’ stance) that:

‘Our immediate response to another person’s need is an emotional one.’
[11] Scott & Seglow. 2007 p. 129)

The authors comment that Blum’s narrative: [12] Blum. 1980.)

‘…fits neatly with the evolutionary account of its origins since, for the latter, feelings and sentiments are simply psychological mechanisms which cause organisms to behave in adaptively successful ways.’

They go on to conclude that:

‘The problem with including emotionally motivated altruism within evolutionary biology, however, is that, as we have seen, the latter evacuates altruism of its distinctively moral content.’ [13] (Scott & Seglow. 2007 p. 129)

But what if ‘emotionally motivated altruism’ is actually ‘emotionally motivated egoism?’


Along with Hume, Hägerstrõm, Blum and many others, I feel strongly that moral truths such as ‘privacy’ are claims which are neither true nor false. Privacy has its origins in a feeling and emotional preference for sexual and defecationary seclusion from the presence or view of others. There is nothing ‘objectively’ immoral about having sex or evacuating the bowels in public. The most important role of philosophy is not to arrive at moral judgments, but to describe the historical development of emotive opinion and seek an explanandum of WHY most humans prefer their most intimate behaviour, or details of their physical, social, economic status to be kept private, and to provide a much needed analysis of the societal influences which have brought such human existential attitudes about in the first place.

Since finishing this essay my attitude towards a NDNAD has been overtaken by some dramatic events. I have now changed my opinion (my ‘emotive attitude’) due to some breaking news.

‘The NDNAD should NOT be expanded to include the whole population, in
spite of the fact that only then will it be an effective deterrent against crime.’

IT JUST ISN’T WORTH THE RISK.
The Home Office announced today that the NDNAD contains around 550,000 files with wrong or misspelt names. [13] (Helm. 2007. This bombshell has completely changed my attitude, not towards the potential benefits of a notionally secure NDNAD, but to the question of whether it would be prudent to allow it to be exploited or negligently broached due to untrustworthy public servants. As if to confirm the cautionary leitmotif of this essay that everything rests on the question of Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes, and in view of the notorious loss of the Child Benefit Database with all our family’s bank and private details, I have decided to withdraw all my support for a compulsory NDNAD. In future I will strongly oppose such reckless record-keeping on the basis of entrenched, long term, gross police incompetence, together with constitutional and political governmental cerebral incapability and managerial ineptitude.
End

References, Tables and Bibliography.
[1] Cole. Simon. 'Study: Fingerprint Evidence Isn't Infallible.' University of California . ABC News . Oct. 12, 2005. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/DyeHard/story?id=1202813&page=1 [Accessed 01.12. 07]
2] Petrocelli. Daniel & Knobler Peter Triumph of Justice. ‘The Final Judgment on the Simpson Case.‘ Plus. Robin Cotton’s Testimony at the O.J. Simpson Trial.
http://www.bobaugust.com/answers.htm [Accessed 16.11.2007]
3] (Sedley. 2007). 05.09.07, BBC Report . http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6979138.stm
[4] (BBC. BBC Panorama Programme: ‘Give Us Your DNA.’ viewed by me 24 Sept.2007.
[5] Brown. Gordon. Sunday Times. 05.09.2007
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article2390338.ece [Accessed 01.12.2007]
[6] Clegg. Nick. ‘All UK 'must be on DNA database' BBC News. 5 September 2007,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6979138.stm [Accessed 07.12.2007]
[7] McNulty. 2007. BBC News. 05.09.2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6979138.stm [Accessed 19.12.2007]
[8] Darling. Alistair. AOL News. 20th Nov. 2007.
[9] Blair. Tony. Speech. Reported in The Observer on March 7th 2004.
[10] Hume. David. ‘A Treatise of Human Nature,’ (first published 1739), Penguin Classics, London, 1984.
[11) Scott. Niall and Seglow. Jonathan. ‘Altruism.’ Open University Press, McGraw-Hill Education, Mcgraw-Hill House, Shoppenhangers Road, Maidenhead, Berkshire, SL6 2QL.
[12] Blum. Leonard. ‘Friendship, Altruism and Morality.’ 1980. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
[13] Helm. Toby, Chief Political Correspondent. ‘Outrage at 500,000 DNA Database Mistakes, ’
Daily Telegraph, 27/08/2007.
Table 1.
Home Office and Census. Department of the Environment. ‘Genomes/Forensics.’
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/forensics.shtml

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adams, Julian, Convergent Issues in Genetics and Demography, Oxford University Press, NY1990
Farley, Mark A., and Harrington, James J., Forensic DNA Technology, Lewis Publishers, Chelsea, Michigan,1991
Sutton, H. Eldon, An Introduction to Human Genetics, Hold, Rinehart, and Winston, New York, 1975.
Blum. Leonard. ‘Friendship, Altruism and Morality.’ 1980. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.