- Richard J. Schmidt
Richard J. Schmidt is an American
physician who was involved in an unusual case which marked the first time inforensic history where viralDNA was used to prove a link between two people withHIV orAIDS in acriminal trial . It has been shown that in1994 Dr. Schmidt took a vial ofblood from one of his AIDS-infected patients to infect his girlfriend with the virus. Six months later the girlfriend was diagnosed with HIV and was convinced that the doctor had infected her. HIV is a fairly fragile virus, and lasts for only a few hours outside the human body.Detective s examining hospital records found that Dr. Schmidt had taken blood from one patient that night, but had never sent the blood to the lab. The forensic challenge at that point was to match theDNA from the virus itself from the patient to thevictim , something that had never been done before. HIV DNA was collected from the ex-girlfriend, from the putative patient source, and from thirty-two other unrelated, HIV-positive individuals living in the same metropolitan area. Scientists concluded that of all the samples they tested, the two viruses' DNA from the victim and the patient matched almost exactly, even with HIV's potential to mutate very rapidly.In
1998 Dr. Schmidt was sentenced to 50 yearshard labor for second degree attemptedmurder .Trivia
* This case was shown on the television series "
Forensic Files ".References
*Michael L. Metzker, David P. Mindell, Xiao-Mei Liu, Roger G. Ptak, Richard A. Gibbs, David M. Hillis. (2002) " [http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/99/22/14292 Molecular evidence of HIV-1 transmission in a criminal case.] " "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences". 99(22):14292-14297.
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