Professor Jose A. Lorente, M.D., Ph.D.
Full Professor
Department of Legal Medicine
Director of the Laboratory of Genetic Identification & Human Rights (LABIGEN)
University of Granada, Spain
Jose A. Lorente (M.D., Ph.D.) is Full Professor of Forensic Medicine at the University of Granada, Spain. He is Specialist in Forensic Medicine (1990), and also a Specialist in Occupational & Industrial Medicine.
After receiving his Ph.D. with Special Honors at the University of Granada in 1989, Dr. Lorente moved with a postdoc position to Heidelberg and Muenster (Germany), and later (1992-1993) to the University of Berkeley and the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, USA .
He has always felt special passion and interests for those cases related to human rights, trying to use cutting-edge technologies to help the families and support justice. He’s been supporting authorities and relatives of missing persons and human rights organizations in different countries.
In 1999 he started the “Phoenix Program of Spain” - Missing Persons Genetic Identification Program which is the first of its kind. In 2004, he created and started as the Scientific Director at the ‘DNA-PROKIDS Program – International Missing Kids Identification Program’, (www.dna-prokids.org). This program is now running in 16 countries around the world with great success (more than 3.500 children identified and returned to their families). He also created and leads the DNA-ProORGAN program to fight human trafficking by tracking the origin of the transplanted organ using genetic identification
Dr. Lorente is also interested in medical genomics, basically in liquid biopsy and cancer interception, and he was elected as Honorary Member of the Asian Forensic Sciences Network (AFSN) in 2009.
KEYNOTE SYNOPSE - “DNA & human rights: Facing the challenges of the XXIst century”
Human rights and forensic science are irrevocably tied in most of the occasions. The correct investigation and prosecution of any kind of alleged criminal needs the support of forensic specialists to generate objective and valuable data that could be used either to condemn or to exonerate, this the greatness of our science.
Among the most heinous crimes are the ones committed against persons. In human rights cases, genetic identification play a crucial role to identify the victim. The use of the most advances technologies, including NGS and the classical STRs, and the development of national and international databases that could be interconnected may play a crucial role along the next years.
Nevertheless, we have to keep in mind that we can play a role to prevent crime, for instance -but not only- avoiding impunity when a criminal is identified. But beside that, we must help to develop protocols to prevent human trafficking, children illegal adoptions or children exploitation, or organ trafficking. All these problems pose a challenge, that can benefit with the use of DNA-based technologies and databases.
