Transcription de l'entretien de Sonia Poulton avec le Dr. Mark Perlin sur la question de l'ADN.
MP : Cyber genetics true allele is just a better modern way of getting information out of DNA evidence. Unlike what people were unable to do for 20 years, the computer can do. It considers all the data, it considers all the possibilities and it accounts for the experiments in ways that people can't.
SP : you are a world-leading scientist as Mark had noted and it's certainly increased since then you had helped at least 400 criminal cases, you're a medical doctor you've testified in courts, your analysis has not only helped convict people but also you've exonerated prisoners as well ; for one example you helped exonerate two men who had been committed for gang rape and you proved that they couldn't possibly have been involved.
MP : That's correct so we've worked at this point on over a thousand cases, there are ten crime labs using True Allele, they've worked on tens of thousands of other cases. There have been over 40 validation studies that established the reliability of the system. And we've done over 10 exonerations thus far of innocent men.
SP : I mean and that's phenomenal and that is potentially what you could also bring to this case, not just about convictions but exonerating people, clearing people, removing people from the frame. So let's have a look at this since 2007 when Madeleine Beth McCann was reported missing on May the 3rd from a holiday apartment in PdL Portugal, the DNA forensic testing has seismically changed, so we could potentially now look at those results with a completely different eye.
MP : Yes in fact with a computer eye instead of a human eye. So the technology for taking biological samples from a crime scene and in the laboratory transforming them into electronic data, that is telling us something about those samples, that hasn't changed much in the last 20 years. But the ability to take those electronic data files and then transform those, objectively and accurately and completely, into useful information, that's been the revolution that I've been privileged to be part of for the last 20 years.
SP : And this is.. what about bias accuracy
MP : Well previous human methods, which is still done by probably most crime labs, require a match, somebody needs to look at the answer at the same time they're looking at the evidence question and that's inherently biased. Other people have published studies that show you can get completely the wrong answer when there are many contributors or there's a little bit of DNA. This is the concern of the forensic science service, the FSS in this case, but with True Allele it doesn't, even it can't even look at the reference samples, save from the MC family or from a suspect, when it's processing the evidence. That unmixing of mixtures that looking at low-level DNA is done completely objectively, without any knowledge of what answer somebody might want, and when the computer's done, comparison can be made to anyone who has DNA. It's a complete answer ready for comparison.
SP : Right so DNA samples, so Martin Grime, a highly expert handler of enhanced victim recovery dogs, took Eddie and Keeler to the apartments and various other things that the Tapas nine, as they became known in the British press, were around and well Madeleine was potentially around in August 2007. Dozens of DNA samples were sent and the dogs obviously alerted in the apartment, the hired car which was hired 25 days after Madeleine was reported missing, the Madeleine's toy, a number of places. Tiles were pulled up, samples were sent to the forensic science services in Birmingham England, it was analyzed by Dr. John Lowe, obviously most all of us who have interest in the case have seen Dr. John Lowe's response. And his conclusion was inconclusive and obviously what Martin Grime told us was that it's one thing the dog's alerting, but you need more than that, you need this to be backed up with you know laboratories and the scientific evidence of it. So what tell us what your thoughts about dr John Lowe's analysis of it.
MP : Well I've seen a summary of the report on 18 items, I've also seen an email he sent explaining one of the results and it's very similar to the other thousand cases that we've seen. Our starting point it's cyber genetics on our service component; we sell products to laboratories, we also provide forensic services, it's always a free analysis, a group prosecutor, defense, innocence, police will send us the electronic DNA data that the lab has produced. And then the reason they're sending it to us is because the lab has called the results inconclusive, because human review or limited software that can't really reach into the data and pull out a complete answer has failed. So that's our starting point. So when Mark Saunokonoko first sent me these reports, I was struck by how typical they are of informative DNA. There are 16 items at the apartment, there are two at the car, and six of the items the lab says, in a more technical reporting language, they're saying there are too many people who left their DNA on this one item, it's too complex. That means there's information there, that's exactly what it's telling you on six of the items, 30 for the tiles, there's information put it into True Allele get the answer. On another six items they're using language too meager to make a meaningful comparison. In plain English that means too little DNA for the limited primitive human review manual methods that they were using at the time. But True Allele has been validated down to one or two cells and you don't need the larger amounts that human review required, we showed this for example when we worked uh in a belfast case for the real ira terrorist Nazarene attack. The data there was from a burned-out car, it was the data between the three signals produced by the lab was so low, it didn't even look like the same data. But True Allele was able to take all of that data, combine it and take inconclusive and turn it into a match statistic of a million by using all the data. So this is these words too meager too complex, that means there's data there for the computer. And in the hired car both of the two items on the luggage were interpretable in the same way. So from my perspective, I'm looking at 14 out of 18 items with the exact language saying the data can be interpreted, they are informative, moreover you have the references, you have the family, it's just that the human review methods that the fss employed at the time, which we're very familiar with, we worked with the FFS for five years helping to eliminate the backlog of the national DNA database, 35 000 samples a year. I was in Birmingham on a regular basis 20 years ago, they started off with about a hundred people just trying to look at simple data from cheek swaps, and having an error rate of one in two thousand. Cyber genetics eliminated that they were largely replaced those people by two desktop computers in our first project with the British government.
SP : So my understanding is you've not necessarily been critical of Dr John Lowe you believe that part of the problem was that they just didn't know how to properly interpret the data that had been generated.
MP : Oh in fact at the time, but in 2005 cyber genetics reanalyzed all the data that was available from DNA from the World Trade Center, comparing the 2000 victim remains to reconstructed genetic types that we did by computer from the missing people from the family members from their personal effects. But we hadn't been to court yet in 2007. Our first criminal case where we testified and a judge decided that the evidence was reliable was in 2009 in Pennsylvania. So there was no way that John Lowe would have even known to contact us. But the world changed in 2009 and again in 2010. In 2011 we started doing cases in the United Kingdom, the United States, in Australia, very challenging cases. Some of what is written in a dr Lowe's report talks about how do you deal with the relatives who might be all contained in the mixture. Well we solve that in a dramatic quintuple family homicide in Sydney Australia 10 years ago The Z homicide where on one streak of blood on a garage floor true allele was able to separate out and unmix to find evidence for four different family members and produce math statistics. So what Dr. Lowe legitimately would have found to be impossible in 2007 was completely routine for true allele a few years later.
SP : That is phenomenal and this is not an attack necessarily on the forensic science service but it was subject to a lot of controversy when it still existed it was forced to close down in 2012 the replacement Europeans is actually just around the corner from where I live um and and there were many problems as I said huge review of over 2 000 cases and the methods were frequently described as being subject to bias. But it is important that dr John Lowe didn't rule out it was Madeleine's DNA, but as we've discovered he just didn't have the computers to answer what he wanted to answer.
MP : That's correct so the data that they produced with the 10 locations with the kits they had actually innovated, at the time they were very good in the laboratory at producing high quality data, just couldn't interpret it. It's it's sort of like if you have an excellent um x-ray facility that produces beautiful radiographs and so you have technicians who are producing stunning MRI's and chest x-rays and there's all this information there, but there's no radiologist, there's no neuroradiologist, there's no one or nothing that can interpret that fantastic data to make a diagnosis. That's what True Allele does, it interprets that DNA data to get accurate objective reliable answers.
SP : And now I think I'm about to tick off the British public, not with you, Mark, but the fact is three years ago you offered your services free of charge to British authorities including the metropolitan police and Operation Grange, the home office, a prime minister and you offered to bring in True Allele to re-examine this data, you didn't even need the actual data you just needed it the computer data of it right ?
MP : We didn't need the DNA samples, the biological material, yes I sent an email to a detective chief inspector, Nicola Wall, who was director or maybe still is for all I know, yeah I never heard back from her, do I don't know of Operation Grange explaining I can send you a copy of the letter if you'd like, explaining this is who we are, this is what we've done in england, this is what we've done in the world, and this is why we think we can help you and since our usual business model in a case like this wouldn't be to charge anyway, we just offered to help and the silence was deafening.
SP : It is deafening because it's been reported in some of our national press. I know for fact that they know about this, there's no doubt about it and their silence is not acknowledging what you're doing, it's a refusal, I take it as an absolute refusal, as do other people who know this case. And that's a real problem to us because the metropolitan police is investigating the disappearance of Madeleine um approximately 14 million pounds spent thus far for a crime that didn't even happen in this country and here you are saying 'help I'll help you I'll use my service I'll give you some answers', it's extraordinary they're not biting off your hand to take up that offer, Mark.
MP : Well I've thought about that and I don't or I can't speculate about things outside of the DNA. But from what I've seen, one reason why groups in some high profile cases have refused offers of assistance, is, when they fail at the DNA analysis, there's a case they just they wanted to let it go, it's not, I wouldn't call it a cover-up, they just don't. Others might but they just don't want to deal with it, it's like people think they have the best position, they have the best painter, the best crime lab, they have the best of everything of course, it's impossible that every crime lab in the world is the best crime lab, but they believe it's the best and they would trust their lab and their scientists, even if they're doing not the best work. And so there's a desire to move on and not reopen that past. We've also seen some agencies that have had such horrific information failures with DNA, where they've known about technology, where at some point the administrators became frightened of the technology, for fear of reopening thousands of past cases where they realized they had failed. Now that's more of a cover-up, when it's institutionalized, that would be a situation if the home office was, oh my lord we have failed at tens of thousands of DNA cases it's so scientific and so technical, the public will never know, move on. And often if that's just what they're being told by administrators or bureaucrats in the lab organization and they would have no reason to not believe it.
SP : One of the comments that was said to me was we cannot simply ignore 2022 technology. It's sitting right in our faces, hand over the DNA results, let the truth be found, it's really that simple. You're just asking 'hand me over those results and we will process it within a week or two and we will be able to tell you what is what'. The reluctance does speak volumes to us unfortunately because this case has been subject to political interference from the get-go and the UK people are very aware of that it's very rare in fact if ever parents of a missing child receive phone calls from a sitting prime minister and his man in waiting who was going to be prime minister 28 days later, which indeed Kate and Gerry MC did from Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. It's extraordinary though there were representatives on the ground the next day in PdL so there's been a lot of interference in this. And the British public is deeply uneasy, especially during a cost of living crisis, when one child goes missing every five minutes and our entire focus is on the disappearance of one child. And I have to say that in the court of public opinion, people are extremely questioning of Kate and Gerry MC and all of the people around them obviously make absolutely no allegations whatsoever about the MC. we're simply examining the evidence and trying to move this case forward because Madeleine is the world's most famous missing child so people want closure.
MP : Well I think your statement about finding out what's what is exactly what True Allele does for DNA. Wouldn't you love to know that for every one of these 18 items of evidence, who is present and by how strongly, who is not present which was technology that the FFS didn't have at all by any means, it was all done subjectively, so who's there, who's not there, by with what support with what scientific evidence. Just dissect that crime scene and tell us who, which people are on the items, which people are not on the items, are there left extra people left over who can be compared with suspects find suspects and make those comparisons, it's just science, I mean all the computer has no dog in the fight, it's just open it up and answer the question.
SP : One of the main arguments is that Madeleine shared her DNA with her parents obviously. Would your True Allele be able to eliminate their DNA from the mixture ?
MP : Of course ! We have so many cases that the case in Australia. There was the case of a family with parents two children and an aunt all related who've been bludgeoned to death in their in their home in suburban Sydney and we were able to tease apart those different family members up to probability which is how it works to make a comparison. We've had cases where the defense approach for a man accused of killing his wife we've had this in several cases like this, evidently there are men who kill their wife at least United States because we get cases like this. It's that you can't prove it's his DNA it's just the children whose DNA have combined and it's and there's nothing you can do with it. Rubbish no, we pull it apart, there's no it's not that child, it's not that child, it's him and with strong match statistics there are methods of working with families subtracting out the DNA accounting for it that's a good argument if you're using failed government human review from 15 years ago, it's ridiculous today, if you're talking about True Allele it's nonsense.
SP : Five on nine in the comments says I'm out of patience with this case what a knowledgeable and humble guest. There is a great deal of support here for you dr Perlin people are extremely excited to hear you were coming on. And in fact I'd just like to send a shout-out to our wonderful Craig Campbell in the comments who said to me last week it would be so great if you get dr Perlin on Rise and I wrote to you that day and you immediately said yes, so thank you Craig for prompting me on that because here is the man here now. So just some more things i'd like to make some sense of obviously Madeleine's DNA should be in the apartment because she was there from the Saturday and well we are told reportedly until the Thursday but but certainly her DNA should be in the apartment so that shouldn't be so shocking should it ?
MP : No, the point of a forensic DNA that makes it interesting is helping to find out when DNA is unexpected when somebody is present who you weren't expecting, I mean if you accuse somebody of a crime and say look your DNA is on your own chair in your own office that's not prohibitive evidence that might be a true scientific statement but it doesn't prove anything.
SP : I think one of the most controversial aspects of the DNA gathering was of course the hired car which was hired 25 days after Madeleine was reported missing. And I think one of the main questions that I've been asked about this because we've seen that it's on record that MC's DNA was in the car. But would you be able to separate out, to actually prove whether Madeleine's DNA was actually in that car where the dog's alerted.
MP : If the data were sufficiently informative which I see no reason not to think is reasonable given that even human review could see uh interpretable data present if the data support it, based on many other cases we've done like this, yes I would expect that we can figure out who in the MC family is present or not present on those items and how strong the DNA support is for that.
SP : The people in the comments are actually now calling for a national campaign to get this done which we at Rise will fully support, in fact we are absolutely going to up the ante on this and we will be sending today copies of this interview to the prime minister to Pretty Patel, the home secretary, to Operation Grange and any authorities and it's not only the UK who have failed to respond to your assistance, it's also the Portuguese police isn't it, Mark ?
MP : I did write to them as well, shortly after I got no response from Operation Grange and I was met with the same reply. I never heard back from them.
SP : it's a problem, it is a real real problem for many people, it doesn't add up, you're clearly gathering fans here today, I mean what is your overview of the whole situation that after three years of offering your service and it wasn't just you it was also Mark S who was contacting these authorities as well and again closed door blank et cetera et cetera. Obviously I don't take you into theoretical territory like of a cover-up or anything but generally do you normally get such resistance to your service.
MP : Occasionally we'll see it in a high-profile case. For example, we've offered over the years at this request of other groups to assist in the Jonbenet Ramsey case. So we offer maybe every five years, we contact them and then they respond but they respond with a polite no, they're not interested. Of course with the methods their lab has used to interpret their DNA, which might be excellent data, of course they're not getting any results. So what's puzzling of course to a scientist is if your goal is to get an answer well why not take the data put it into a reliable machine and get the answer? Why would you do anything else if what you wanted was the truth, I don't know.
SP : Completely 100 % and actually the same applies to the McCanns because there's no getting around the fact that the issue of the dogs still hangs over the McCanns. People still say ask the dog you know I'm not asked dogs that's what Gerry McCann said when asked an interview about them, but people still say dogs don't lie, and so this hangs over them so equally in the same way as it could implicate anybody who was there, it could also clear them couldn't it so it's to their advantage to take up your offer.
MP : Yes in fact with the new suspect that's arisen, Christian B, now absolutely what's what's occurred to me and others is that if he's actually accused of a crime and there are reasonable laws to defend yourself from the country that he's in, then his defense attorneys should under all the laws, I know have discovery rights to demand the DNA that could clear him. Now the truth is the way the law works is whether the DNA implicates them or clears them, it makes no difference, they're entitled to that evidence, because it relates to their guilt or innocence, what they do it is their own business. So if he were to be formally charged and his lawyers wanted to pursue that they had to have every legal right to demand from the British government the data that they have not been very forthcoming with for the last three years.
SP : Chloe says this man has just given the Met the opportunity to have a better way of cracking the case and I believe that once the British public at large is fully aware of your offer and what you're capable of doing, I think people will be horrified that your offer has not been taken up sooner and it does leave a very serious question mark over the people involved including all of the authorities. And Craig, he's allowed to access this now as a suspect in Portugal, yes that's right Christian B can now do that and the other thing is, Mark, is that obviously you're working with this data and obviously a lot of it is gathered by enhanced victim recovery dogs, what is your experience of EVRD dogs and the reliability of them ?
MP : I don't have any, so I can't comment but my question for you I'm not supposed to ask you a question you asked me a question anyway England is a democracy and okay we say the same thing in the States all right, but nonetheless England's a democracy and if you have tens of thousands of viewers who are concerned about the issue, shouldn't they be writing to government absolutely and demanding that government do its job instead of failing.
SP : Yes right this is a shout-out to our Rise viewers. Please once this stream is over, I would request very dearly that you send to your local mp a copy of this recording, get your local mp behind it, tell them we want an answer to this because, let's be clear about this, dr Mark Perlin is not some fly-by-night opportunist who wants to hook himself to the case, he's a leading scientist who is offering this service and you have been backed by leading people including Colin Sutton who has been on Rise before, colin Sutton leading British detective cracked many amazing cases and he believes that this is absolutely a game changer, so it's not just people like me who is an amateur in the realm of DNA interpretation, but it's also people who've worked with it before for his own investigations and he believes absolutely that what you're offering is a game changer, Mark.
MP : Well it has been in many cases and we have worked on many cases in the United Kingdom where it's made a difference to the case.
SP : Exactly and I think one of the problems as pointed out by somebody in the comments is the public has not been told the full story so they've only been fed half a story and as I say so far we've spent approximately and that's what we know of 14 million pounds for a case that didn't happen in this country. And here you are saying I'll help and you are still being refused. It is heartbreaking for those of us who know the case and feel that the answers are just there, there and waiting for us. And so human creative says we're on it already MP Blitz and even why haven't the McCanns accepted your offer, Mark, I would as a parent want answers and I have to be honest I would too I mean thank god this is not something I've experienced thank god but but what parent wouldn't want answers wouldn't you want to know if your child left that apartment alive or dead. I mean that's because you can tell us that can't you?
MP : As a parent of three boys I could say I would but I can't put myself in someone else's shoes I can just say what I would.
SP : Sure but what you can tell us is whether Madeleine left that apartment or live or dead if the the material is there for you to interpret it.
MP : I don't know about her being live or dead, I do know about whose DNA would be on or not on, which items up to what the data can tell us right. Well without the data I can't say more.
SP : No you can't, what would you like to happen, Mark ?
MP : Oh wouldn't it be lovely if I received an email today, the first of July, from Operation Grange or the home office, saying here's a dropbox and here are the profiles. Here are the 18 evidence items or more if they have them. They're the electronic data files, I'm speaking to the home office now, they would have been called dot ffSA files that's the file type at the time, to just send along those files and any other reports they might have. And then in a week or two, I could send a nice reply, having to receive those by dropbox and email to the correct people and tell them scientifically 'here's a chart and the chart is telling you here's a list of the evidence items here are the references and here are the numbers that tell you to what extent someone is present or not present'. As I said we have done that for over a thousand cases, we've done it in dozens of studies are, it's just routine for us, this is easy.
SP : You make it sound incredibly easy, I just I literally like if I didn't know as much about this case and the interference as I do, I would be baffled, but unfortunately I'm not baffled that your offer hasn't been taken up and that is a sentiment that is shared with many of our viewers. Let me read you some of the comments....... Let's make this happen folks they're saying in the comments and that is really what we need to know because it is time, this case has been hanging over many people for a very very very long time and you know as someone who's made two documentaries about it I know it's not as straightforward as a child going missing and I think that the resistance to you is much deeper than it may appear on the surface. But we are going to do everything we humanly can to get you that data, you need it, they need to release it to you, and you need to analyze it and that is something we completely back and we will do as much as we can to see that happen, Mark !
MP : That is fantastic I look forward to receiving it.
SP : Well I you know as Craig says you could have the results within a week... it is we want some answers for what happened to a three-year-old girl 12 days away from her fourth birthday in may 2007. it's that simple you're offering a public service and uh it frankly beggars belief that we're even having to have this conversation rather than you having interpreted it three years ago. I thank you so much for joining us this morning, Mark it has been so incredibly insightful you have everybody going in the comments people are ready to march on parliament and which well you know frankly probably couldn't be a better time for it and I do hope you're going to be able to get some sleep now because it's just gone half past three your time, are you ?
MP : Yes that's my plan, my wife has waited up, she said so she's so looking forward to, thank you so much uh for having me on your program and for the opportunity to explain what it is that cybergenetics can do.
SP : You're absolutely welcome, dr Perlin, a real expert not a puppet and so say all of us everybody dr Mark Perlin extraordinary individual who can help us understand better and solve the Madeleine MC case...
