And in the private sector, many in the business of providing DNA fingerprinting services and supplying reagents for DNA testing see the NRC imprimatur as an economic boon to an already growing industry.
While most criminal courts have ruled that DNA fingerprinting is valid and have allowed it into evidence, some courts have barred this relatively new test on the grounds that prosecutors have not yet proved it is widely accepted in the scientific community. To that end, the FBI, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and other groups commissioned NRC in January 1990 to put together a committee of experts to assess DNA fingerprinting.
The stamp of approval came on April 16 from NRC committee chairman Victor McKusick, a geneticist at Johns Hopkins University, who wrote in the report's preface: "DNA typing for personal identification is a powerful tool for criminal investigation and justice."
But the committee report ...
