Annie,
Aside from perhaps gleaning just a small understanding of what I've had to put up with and deal with for the last four years now, take some consolation, as I have, from the words of the MD/PhD who runs Cenetron Diagnostics, the largest DNA testing facility in Texas when I asked him about the subject (I know, I've said it before, it bears repeating):
"Anyone who questions the mtDNA testing and results Gill and the others did simply does not understand the fundamental science of DNA analysis. (long pause) but then, there are also a lot of people who still believe the Earth is flat I suppose."
I sure do understand, and know yours must have been worse because it's a much larger forum. I did get the far extreme end of the AA fanatics come my way, and because they live in a realm all their own, it's hopeless to discuss rationally with them. Maybe that realm they live on is a flat earth! Sigh.
The scientist is right of course, and it's sad that some just refuse to accept it. Dr. Melton told me this:
As in all fascinating historical mysteries, conspiracy theories will abound. I can address only the lab process.
My response to you is the same that I give to everyone who questions the legitimacy of the Anderson results:
Multiple labs got the same results on different tissues (hair/intestinal tissues) at different times. Independent testing such as this is best practice in forensic testing, especially when the results are going to be scrutinized at the level of this case. It is highly unlikely that the same results would be obtained in different labs if the work was shoddy. More likely, the labs would have gotten different results that made no sense compared to each other.
The science that was used is basic, and the methods, while becoming more sensitive and streamlined since the time of the original tests, were and are designed to get at the most basic building blocks of human identity: the DNA sequence. The DNA sequence cannot change when the methods change. There is no more elemental level of inspection.
Conspiracy theories don't worry me. The weight of well-conceived and time-tested protocols carried out by laboratories with impeccable credentials and nothing to gain from either answer are behind all the results, which have been published in scientific, peer-reviewed literature.
I hope this helps.
Best wishes,
Terry Melton
The conspiracy theorists who really don't know what they're talking about, only wishing, can't decide if the tests were wrong or the intestines were switched. It seems to go back and forth, as desperate as they are to deny reality. As Dr. Melton says the tests are valid today, and if there had been a mistake anywhere, all four labs wouldn't have matched. Even this won't stop the over the top bunch from claiming the intestine wasn't AA's, though they can never give you any proof or even a theory as to why it's not, what it was switched with, when and how. As you've said here before, if they can't do that, they really have no case at all. I'm about to that point too. I don't want to play any more games and listen to their same old lists when we have the proof and they can't refute it.
