April 2, 2007
Some Stalk Strangers to Gather DNA Samples
They swab the cheeks of strangers and pluck hairs from corpses. They travel hundreds of miles to entice their suspects with an old photograph, or sometimes a free drink. Cooperation is preferred, but not necessarily required to achieve their ends. If the amateur genealogists of the DNA era bear a certain resemblance to members of a “CSI” team, they make no apologies. Prompted by the advent of inexpensive genetic testing, they are tracing their family trees with a vengeance heretofore unknown. “People who realize the potential of DNA,” said Katherine Borges, a co-founder of the International Society of Genetic Genealogy, “will go to great lengths to get it.”
Stalking Strangers’ DNA to Fill in the Family Tree, New York Times, April 2, 2007.
Posted by EPIC at April 2, 2007 5:35 PM
