The “mistake” made by local chemists to mislabel two containers with swab samples can be considered a “sackable offence” that could very well “kill someone”, according to a DNA expert testifying in the Anwar Ibrahim Sodomy II trial at the High Court here today.
Australian consultant molecular geneticist from Dr Brian Leslie McDonald said that “it is not an option as a scientist to ignore a mistake such as a wrongly labelled date on a DNA sample if he was aware of it”.
“You’re obliged to do something about it… to assume changes (have been made) to some results is not an option (you can take); you could kill someone.
“If you receive a sample and you can see a mistake, you need to correct and document it,” said Dr McDonald during examination-in-chief by Ram Karpal Singh.
Ram earlier pointed to evidence in court which stated that samples were taken from complainant Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan’s body on June 28 (two days after the alleged sodomy), but it was discovered that two containers were marked June 26.
Despite the error, Ram said chemist Dr Seah Lay Hong had testified that she merely assumed they were wrongly labelled.
(Seah had previously testified that the discrepancies on the dates would not affect the integrity of the samples as the seals on them were intact. She said that such handwritten errors on labelling can happen.)
Ram: She (Seah) assumed they were mistakes, that was the explanation Seah offered. Is this in accordance with the international guidelines?
McDonalds: It is a sack-able offence.
McDonald said that there was no evidence to suggest that Seah had later re-labelled the containers, adding: “If it was, in fact, a mistake, the doctor should have consulted the person and get it from the horse’s mouth… that should have beeen the correct procedure.”
Guidelines not followed
He also criticised the work of DNA analysis carried out by chemist Nor Aidora Saedon, saying that her analysis could have shown that the (DNA sample) belonged to more than one person.
He said Nor Aidora clearly had not followed international guidelines when she concluded that the DNA sample was that of a single person when the variations in the readings were too high, and there could have been a “mixed” (sample).
According to his analysis, there could have been more than one person’s DNA in the samples collected from the lock-up cell used by Anwar, which Nor Aidora had worked on.
“If you see two peaks going beyond 60%, you can be confident that it doesn’t come from the same person. It could be a mixed sample. She specifically ignored guidelines when she reported the reading as (coming from) a single person.
“If this was a test in school, she would have failed,” McDonald said, adding that, according to guidelines, Aidora should have reported her findings.
McDonald said that Nor Aidora’s standards had also differed from that of Seah, adding that both should have adopted the same methodologies.
On a separate issue, when asked if it was normal or desirable when taking samples from a patient’s body to use a glass slide to swab the sample as a precautionary measure, McDonald said it was a normal practice internationally.
“(It’s not just desirable.) It is the only way you do it. It has been the standard practice for over 40 years,” said McDonald, who agreed that in Anwar’s case, this had not been done.
Asked on the importance of having such slides, McDonald said: “It is absolutely essential, specifically in a case of sexual assault. It’s an alleged assault and you need to know what’s on the swab when you took it.
“One of the reasons to have such swab slides is to see if it was consistent with what was being analysed. It would have certainly been very helpful (if they did it),” said McDonald.
source:FMT
Peguam Anwar bangkit kredibiliti Jabatan Kimia
cheers.
No comments:
Post a Comment