Parabon NanoLabs, Inc. is an American company based in Reston, Virginia, that develops nanopharmaceuticals[1] and provides DNA phenotyping services for law enforcement organizations.
[7][8] Moses Schanfield, professor of forensic sciences at George Washington University, criticized the lack of any peer review, noting that there is no publicly available performance record for the product.
[5] In a 2016 article the American Civil Liberties Union recommended only using genetic phenotyping "...where the link between genes and external characteristics is based on well-proven, peer-reviewed, widely accepted science, such as is apparently now the case with hair and eye color.
[10] North Carolina detectives felt Parabon's Snapshot DNA Phenotyping Service had been helpful in identifying Jose Alvarez, Jr. in 2015 as the killer of Troy and LaDonna French in 2012.
[10] Parabon NanoLabs was awarded a two-year contract by the United States Department of Defense to develop a software platform dubbed 'Keystone' for the forensic analysis of DNA evidence.
This change in privacy policy was forecast to make it much more difficult in the future for law enforcement agencies and Parabon to identify suspects and solve cold cases using genetic genealogy.
[3] In December 2019, it was announced that GEDmatch was sold to forensic, for-profit, DNA analysis company Verogen,[22] whose CEO Brett Williams vowed to make the database safer for its customers, including fighting search warrants.
[23] In a May 2020 interview with Scott Fisher of the podcast Extreme Genes, Moore revealed that in her capacity as the genetic genealogy lead, she no longer uses GEDmatch exclusively because of the decline of profiles available to law enforcement.
"[24] This restricted direct-access limitation may be due to the fact that FamilyTreeDNA has their own genetic genealogy consultant, Barbara Rae-Venter, who solved the Golden State Killer cold case in May 2018.