London

Deceitfully obtaining and testing someone else's DNA would become a criminal offence under recommendations delivered to the British government by a high-powered commission.

The Human Genetics Commission says it is worried that no law currently prevents DNA samples of the rich and famous being obtained, analysed and published — or stops unscrupulous family members from taking material from children and secretly carrying out paternity tests.

The recommendation is one of several made in a report, Inside Information, that the commission was due to release on 21 May. The government has welcomed the report and says that it will consider the issues raised during the government's discussions on genetics, the results of which it expects to publish later this year.

“There must be systems in place that promote trust about the way that clinicians, researchers and ultimately the state handle genetic information,” it says. “People need to feel confident that their information is safe from being used in the wrong way.” To address these concerns, it calls for wider debate over ways to control the use of genetic information in police forensic science, clinical research projects and setting personal insurance premiums.

Civil-liberties groups in Britain are particularly worried by a recent case in which an HIV-positive prisoner volunteered a blood sample for a genetic study, only to see the sample taken by police and used successfully to prosecute the man for deliberately transmitting HIV to an ex-girlfriend.

Some researchers are worried that similar cases will ultimately deter prisoners and others from consenting to participate in medical trials or in projects such as the Medical Research Council's Biobank UK, which hopes to collect DNA samples from half a million people (see Nature 417, 8; 2002). The commission says that a law may be needed to bar police and other officials from access to genetic research databases.

“We've tried to identify the main principles which should govern the way our society deals with personal genetic information,” says Alexander McCall Smith, a professor of law at the University of Edinburgh who specializes in medical and criminal law and is vice-chairman of the Human Genetics Commission. Many of the techniques and issues considered are only at very early stages, but it is important to establish a regulatory framework of legislation and guidelines before they develop further, he says.

The commission says that public concern may arise as growing knowledge of genetics allows aspects of a suspect to be built up from samples found at a crime scene — or even to predict elements of the suspect's behaviour or medical history. McCall Smith points out, for example, that the forensic-science service can already tell the police the chances of a suspect having ginger hair based on the analysis of just one gene, that encoding melanocortin receptor 1.

Paul Debenham, director of life sciences at the Laboratory of the Government Chemist, based in London, which provides genetic-analysis services for the police and government, says he would welcome guidelines covering the forensic uses of DNA. Experts say, however, that legislation to prevent authorities obtaining medical information from DNA would be difficult to craft in such a way as to allow the collection of data related to suspects' appearances.