Testing the DNA of Deceased Famous Persons - the Ethical Debate

The testing of DNA that can be found in fingernails, hair clippings, and various other body parts has become a great help in proving someone guilty - or innocent - of having committed a crime. This is, of course, a wonderful thing. Many innocent people have been freed from having been unjustly imprisoned for a crime because of DNA testing, and many guilty parties have been locked up because of DNA testing. There seems to be no real ethical dilemma for using DNA testing for such a noble cause.

DNA testing is also being used to test for predisposition towards diseases such as cancer or Parkinson's disease. The possibility of testing fetuses for such diseases is a little murkier when it comes to the ethical side of the issue. If the fetus has a predisposition towards some sort of disease, the parents could choose to abort it and the moral argument about abortion rages on.

But what about using DNA testing to try to discover the secrets that are being kept by famous figures that have been dead for many years? On the surface, using DNA testing to find out - for instance - what killed a famous person sounds fascinating. Recently some Italian researchers used the DNA found in a chapel to determine that Francesco I de' Medici and Bianca Cappello (his second wife) had died from arsenic poisoning, rather than from malaria. If you do not happen to be related to whoever it was that poisoned the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who has been dead for more than 400 years, you probably find this little forensic tidbit to be interesting.

On the other hand, there has been debate about testing Abraham Lincoln's DNA to find out whether or not he suffered from a disease called 'Marfan syndrome' - a disease that would explain his height, loose joints, and abnormally shaped chest. Seems harmless enough. But some historians have suggested that Lincoln also had a predisposition to depression, and if this is found to be true during the testing for Marfan syndrome it could change how we view his political achievements.