Police use genetic information to solve cold cases. Are active cases next?

Solving a cold case like a decades old murder seems, on an ethical level, pretty simple. I mean, as a society we can agree that it’s important to give families closure, information about what happened to their loved one, and a suspect.

But what is the cost of that closure? Are we all willing to give up some privacy for it? To show law enforcement the data that makes you fundamentally you? And arguably the most private data we have — our genes.

KUOW's Clare McGrane explains the very ethically dubious practice of law enforcement using genetic information from family members of someone who committed a crime to solve cold cases.

One of the first uses of forensic genetic genealogy was in Washington state, to apprehend a suspect in a 30-year-old murder. Since then, the technique has been key to solving hundreds of cases. But while the use of genetic evidence has changed the cold-case landscape, it has also raised questions about how that material is collected and when it is used.

Listen to the full conversation by clicking the audio above.