Word: semen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...another case decided last week, a New York State judge raised some doubts about the courtroom use of DNA technology. Forensic DNA tests seek to compare the genetic patterns of a suspect or victim with those of the human remains, such as blood or semen, left at the scene of a crime. Proponents of DNA identification have long insisted that the tests are so precise that they can establish matches or exclusions to a near certainty...
...technique called DNA fingerprinting has, since the mid-1980s, become an important tool for police and prosecutors. Matching a suspect's DNA, the genetic material found in most cells, with DNA found in blood or semen at the scene of a crime can provide seemingly indisputable evidence of guilt. But now DNA fingerprinting is itself on trial, and shadows of doubt are falling on detective work that once seemed virtually infallible. Says William Thompson, a professor of social ecology at the University of California at Irvine: "This technology has been steamrollered through the courts, and now it's beginning...
Administration conservatives were stunned by the report's candor. They were particularly outraged that he did not preach abstinence alone and refer euphemistically to body fluids rather than semen. "The White House doesn't like the C word. But if you don't talk about condoms, people are going to die. So I talk." Liberals were amazed that Koop had produced a reasoned report with such compassion for homosexuals, whom he had once called antifamily. Phyllis Schlafly, who said the report sounded as if it had been edited by a gay-rights group, lashed out against Koop...
...years of marriage, Junior Davis, 30, and his wife Mary Sue, 28, tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to have a child. That experience led the couple six years ago to a fertility clinic in Knoxville, where eggs taken from Mrs. Davis were fertilized in a laboratory with her husband's semen...
...technique not only helps place the suspect at the scene of the crime, but can also suggest what he or she was doing there. "One may have some plausible explanation for fingerprints," explains Timothy Berry, a prosecutor in Orlando. "But blood, semen, uprooted hair, skin under the fingernails of the victim are something else." The information can be so damning that it precipitates a confession. In Tacoma last December, a bus driver pleaded guilty to rape, although the victim, a 57-year-old woman with Alzheimer's disease, does not remember the crime. DNA analysis established that semen...