Bizarre Genetic Testing of African Refugees Raises Outcry from Scientists

// added September 30, 2009 // 8 comments //
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EmperorThan

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http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/09/30/genetic-testing-...

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.
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8 comments // Bizarre Genetic Testing of African Refugees Raises Outcry from Scientists

  • Blkwdw
  • sidedish
  • TheTrueReligion_Tolerance
    • 0
      TheTrueReligion_Tolerance  

    • This test is incredibly flawed. Ethnic groups with shared languages and cultures are not limited to national boundaries. So basing testing on languages and biological testing of diets are very inaccurate. Amharic people live in both Somalia and Ethiopia so their diets and language are they same because they are Amharic before they are Somalian or Ethiopia. The UK Border Agency needs to realize that not every National country has a clean cut ethnic identity like European countries did for centuries. Ethnicity is not Nationality.

      This is the unfortunate consequence of chaotic international systems and arbitrary colonial boundaries turned into national ones.

    • 4 months ago
  • Mobius2012
  • trut1
  • metalcookiesxy70
    • 0
      metalcookiesxy70  
    • trut1:

      Huh? what are you talking about?

      Africa did nothing to Europe, however, Europe damaged Africa to the point of which you see today of Africa...

      Poor economic stance, and the need to survive..

    • 4 months ago
  • metalcookiesxy70
    • 0
      metalcookiesxy70  

    • Oh, but what about from the very beginning when the Europeans came to Africa, to it out, to steal their natural resources and money, and then tested the "primitive" Africans, and why DID human Africans were being used to be tested? Why Africans?

    • 4 months ago
  • Mobius2012
    • 0
      Mobius2012  

    • What ever happened to birth certificates? There's something really bizarre happening in Africa and the U.K. Border Agency should be dismantled and investigated immediately. Europe needs to leave Africa Alone!

    • 4 months ago
  • EmperorThan
    • 0
      EmperorThan  
    • Mobius2012:

      Well they're being generous in taking refugees in, but to me (and these scientists) it doesn't matter where the refugees are coming from in Africa.

      They seem to want to play favorites with countries they have had a historical colonial settlement in. They feel responsible for the problems in them, and don't want to lend a hand to Africans in other countries they didn't have colonial settlements in in the past. A bizarre humanitarian gesture if there ever was one.

    • 4 months ago
  • mink_Stacktrane
    • 0
      mink_Stacktrane  
    • Mobius2012:

      Emperor and Mobius, you're both correct: there are mixed reasons for the impetus to receive refugees, the more obvious ones are truly meaningful and altruistic, however, when taken at the historical & "national" level, are parasitic at best- domineering at worst.

      I'm unsure if the conceptual "Europe" has left Africa "alone" for any time during the last half millennium. The other side is that Afrika must become self-sufficient and correcting if we want more autonomous control over its myriad of overlapping cultures & regions.

    • 18 days ago
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