From Our Founder, Margaret Press:

In 2017 when DDP was founded, there was no such thing as investigative genetic genealogy (IGG). Along with others using similar techniques, we invented an entirely new investigative tool to help law enforcement and medical examiners develop leads. Genetic Genealogy had been used for years by people exploring their family histories and adoptees seeking information about their birth parents, but applying these techniques to identify unknown subjects had never been done before. To this date, the field is subject to very little government oversight despite its widespread and growing use in forensic casework.

With great power comes great responsibility. The mothers of IGG recognized the potential for their invention to accomplish amazing good, and also to do significant harm. As we moved forward with the use of IGG, we also engaged in ongoing debate about its ethical use. These conversations continue to this day as leaders in the field participate in initiatives to develop and codify standards for the effective and ethical practice of IGG. 

As we close out our 6th anniversary year and reflect on how we arrived where we are today, we must acknowledge we have not been perfect. We have made mistakes. Recently we undertook an investigation into our past internal discussions and actions to see what we can learn from them to inform our future path and ethical practices. This work to honestly confront and address our past attitudes and behavior has been particularly painful for me, because I led the charge and set the tone and guidelines for everyone within the DNA Doe Project.

An important method used in IGG is the analysis of DNA relatives of the unknown person’s profile – called matches. During the period between May, 2019 and January, 2021, DDP leadership and volunteers made use of tools within GEDmatch.com to view matches of matches to the DNA profiles of Jane and John Does whose cases we were working on. Our team used GEDmatch tools as designed, but they did provide information for people whose DNA profiles were marked “opt-out” for law enforcement searching. While the tools worked as designed, they had not been updated to exclude opted-out profiles. This was a bug in the software.

During that time period, GEDmatch had implemented a new opt-in/opt-out strategy, starting by opting out all profiles in its database to law enforcement searching, intentionally cutting off access to the data essential to IGG casework. To review the history of GEDmatch and its use in forensic cases, check out this Wikipedia article.

Our actions reflected our organization’s culture at the time. We had been working in the wild west with no rules other than our own sense of justice. DDP was populated with brilliant researchers who were experts at exploring and exploiting all possible tools and tricks, powered by a fanatical doggedness to overcome obstacles in order to get the information that would allow us to bring our Does back to their families. This singular focus blinded us to the broader ethical considerations inherent in the use of DNA profiles provided by the public. The culture of DNA Doe Project in 2019 was very much driven by the end goal.

We have always been committed to abide by the Terms of Service for the databases we used, and take our responsibility to our law enforcement and medical examiner partner agencies extremely seriously. In hindsight, it’s clear we failed to consider the critically important need for the public to be able to trust that their DNA data will only be shared and used with their permission and under the restrictions they choose. We should have reported these bugs to GEDmatch and stopped using the affected reports until the bugs were fixed. Instead, on that first day when we found that all of the profiles were set to opt-out, I discouraged our team from reporting them at all. I now know I was wrong and I regret my words and actions.

With the benefit of ongoing discussions with others in the field during the years that followed, our organization and the field as a whole have been rapidly evolving and improving our Codes of Ethics. Every new endeavor has growing pains. The most painful of all are finding your moral compass, revisiting and facing past mistakes, and from that reflection forging paths to a stronger ethical future.