(Presentation of award.)

DR. LEDERBERG: I’m very happy to have the occasion to talk to you about the emerging
social contract. It’s been a real privilege for me to attend this conference and to be a
bystander, more generally of observing the development of the art.

As you know, I don’t do forensics, but I have been following DNA very closely since the
publications from Oswald Avery at the Rockwell Institute on February 1, 1944.

Every new technology offers special opportunities and challenges to the social fabric and
DNA is hardly an exception, but I am pleased to note how carefully DNA forensics is being
tended, acknowledging the adversarial frictions that Henry eluded to as a premier example of
technology assessment and I wish that could go on so well, so effectively, and with such
important scientific as well as public input, as has been the case here.

Perhaps, it’s precisely the centrality of DNA forensics and legal systems that has led to this
kind of oversight, but I think the net is a very positive role. The battles have been fought.
It’s quite clear what the outcomes are, and I think we have a lot to thank for the labors of
people like Henry and other people on the panel here for having accomplished it.

But one has to say in thinking about the social contract, that’s our relationships with our
community and state, there are trade-offs between the very, very important values of law
enforcement and other personal values.

DNA technology has the virtue of tending to support the truth, which as a scientist, I
wholeheartedly support. Social acceptance of the new contracts emerging, what degree of
privacy will we submit to; how much will we pay for these new systems; and all the rest; will
be very sensitive to how the technology is used in the current interval.

Reliability is, of course, the main touchstone, and this has been greatly advanced by
proficiency testing and laboratory accreditation. One flawed apple could upset the cart, and
we must not allow enthusiasm, demonization of alleged culprits, or sheer sloppiness to

compromise this marvelous tool. 2 ,

As for the work of the DNA Advisory Board, I have to single out Bruce-Sprdetr (phonetic.)
well known to most of you as the person who really did most of the work.

In a more general sphere about that contract, most of what I wanted to be said has been
covered by others, but I'll just recapitulate a few cautions mentioned by many; the importance
of the quality of the physical evidence and its preservation for reassessment, especially, in a
case of cold hits; not to relax the quest for supporting evidence, and there’s a real danger of
complacency on account of the sheer technical power of the DNA tool.

If you have a hit against the database, you may really want to have an opportunity to re-check
what went into the database in the first place, and if the original evidence is gone, truth will
be denied that possibility, and the defendants may be unfairly treated or there may not be the
possibility of an appropriate confrontation.

And I have to say that we may be at the peak of the capability and effectiveness of DNA
because the counters to it are just gradually emerging.

Watch out for spoofs. We’ve already heard of some that outdo fictional imagination. The
story of the person what while he was incarcerated in prison managed to concoct another rape
with his own semen outside. Folks who do that are going to be thinking of all kinds of other
ways of beating the system.

There may be a black market someday in diversionary DNA that perps might leave at a crime
scene and point to high officials, perhaps, even the highest, and defense attorneys will learn
how to befog the identification.

And as a couple of people said, we must strive to keep the system honest and fair, enhance
poor defendants’ access to objective analysis and interpretation, and with sometimes
incompetent defense counsel, the court may have recourse to third parties and then to be
sensitive to the fallout in criminal procedure.

We heard eloquent remarks about the utilities, and they’re undeniable, about collecting
profiles from every arrestee, but arrestee profiling, with all the advantages that that may offer
for effective law enforcement, greatly enhances the incentive for police to make ill-founded
arrests.

Will this backfire? How will courts deal with matches that are the fruit of an arrest deemed
tainted? And some courts have gone very far in their zeal to curb the police power, and
defense counsel are likely to rise to that occasion as well.
So the introduction of such a profound change of procedure as routine arrestee profiling really
has to be accompanied with a broader view of what ripples that will generate and the
precautions that need to be taken to ensure that this is done in an appropriately just and
socially acceptable manner. Thank you very much.

(Applause.)