Bizarre Genetic Testing of African Refugees Raises Outcry from Scientists

[Vakai]

Scientists in the United Kingdom are outraged over a new program that seeks to determine asylum seekers’ nationalities through DNA and the isotopes present in their hair and fingernails. “Horrifying,” “naïve,” and “flawed” are among the adjectives geneticists and isotope specialists have used to describe the “Human Provenance pilot project,” launched quietly in mid-September by the U.K. Border Agency. The experts say the tests simply aren’t accurate enough to pinpoint a person’s country of origin.

The program will be tried out on asylum seekers from the Horn of Africa, and will seek to establish whether applicants from Kenya or Ethiopia are masquerading as refugees from war-torn Somalia. Yet scientists say the Border Agency’s goals confuse ancestry or ethnicity with nationality. David Balding, a population geneticist at Imperial College London, notes that “genes don’t respect national borders, as many legitimate citizens are migrants or direct descendants of migrants, and many national borders split ethnic groups”.

In the second part of the testing, an applicant will be asked to give hair and fingernail samples; by looking at which forms of certain elements the samples contain, the government scientists hope to find evidence of the person’s diet and environment. But isotope specialist Tamsin O’Connell says the results won’t be specific enough to be meaningful. “It is very difficult to identify individuals to very specific locations using isotopes alone,” she said. “For example, you can’t necessarily tell the difference between a Frenchman or a German. They can be used on a regional or continental level, but they don’t relate to a political boundary”.

The UK Border Agency maintains that the program will be useful first step in determining an applicant’s true nationality, and says the biological tests will be followed up by in-person interviews and language analysis tests.

http://current.com/items/91063809_bi...scientists.htm

[desert burner]

this should be a joke how can you differentiate somalis from Kenya and Ethiopia from that of Somalia by testing the hair and the nails how can you differentiate me from a group of Somali people unless i tell you i come from Kenya.

[Xusein]

I wonder what would happen to a Somali from Kenya, Ethiopia, or Djibouti if they went through.

DNA doesn't know anything about our human created "nationalities". What a creepy idea really.

[BUTEMBO21]

Really dumb.

[popa1980]

This a joke?

[betaab2]

they test their balls and ovaries?

[BUTEMBO21]

These guys are bored. don't know what to do.

What kinds of educated , civilezed people would even think like that.

[kaethar]

Well... that's pointless. What they should actually do is hire linguists from different countries. It might be difficult to find people suitable for such a job but it would be by far the easiest way of finding out if a person is native to a certain country or region. But maybe this is the method they have right now...

[MBA-Congo]

Originally Posted by desert burner

this should be a joke how can you differentiate somalis from Kenya and Ethiopia from that of Somalia by testing the hair and the nails how can you differentiate me from a group of Somali people unless i tell you i come from Kenya.

level of drugs in their system(khat), diet all that makes you who your are in your confined state.

[Xusein]

Ethiopians and Kenyans chew it too.

Originally Posted by kaethar

Well... that's pointless. What they should actually do is hire linguists from different countries. It might be difficult to find people suitable for such a job but it would be by far the easiest way of finding out if a person is native to a certain country or region. But maybe this is the method they have right now...

But like I said, what would they do with the Ethnic Somalis from the those neighboring Horn countries? Are they going to be finding linguists who are specialized in Somali regional dialects? LOL, these borders only existed for not even 50 years, lets not forget that.