DNA fingerprinting had a well-defined birthday. In the March 7, 1985 issue of Nature, Alec Jeffreys and coworkers described the first develop- ment ofmu1tilocus probes capable of simultaneously revealing hypervari- ability at many loci in the human genome and called the procedure DNA fingerprinting. It was a royal birth in the best British tradition. In a few months the emerging technique had permitted the denouement of hith- erto insoluble immigration and paternity disputes and was already heralded as a major revolution in forensic sciences. In the next year (October, 1986) DNA...