DNA samples from Haitian children displaced by last month’s earthquake could soon arrive in Fort Worth as part of an urgent effort to deter human trafficking.

Dr. Arthur Eisenberg, a professor at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth, is a collaborator in DNA-ProKids, an international humanitarian project that reunites trafficked children with their families.

DNA samples taken from children are entered into a database and compared with DNA from parents who reported their children missing.

In the last year, the project’s creators have worked to establish databases in countries with high rates of trafficking, such as Guatemala, Thailand and the Philippines. Now they’re rushing to deploy thousands of DNA collection kits to Haiti.

Human-rights groups and the U.S. government have been sounding alarms about the potential for trafficking, and concerns were heightened even more last week when 10 Americans were arrested on suspicion of trying to take 33 children out of Haiti without the proper documents.

Officials worry that children could wind up in forced prostitution rings or sweatshops.

“You see how many tens of thousands of children are on the street,” said Eisenberg, who is co-director of UNT’s Center for Human Identification. “You see this fervor to get them adopted out. In the meantime, parents don’t know where their children are. Children don’t know where their parents are. It is a rich source of trafficking victims.”

In the trenches

Eisenberg was in the Philippines when the 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Jan. 12, flattening buildings and killing more than 200,000 Haitians.

For years, he has traveled the world, helping other countries improve their DNA technology. Joining him in the Philippines was Dr. Jose Lorente, a longtime friend and professor at the University of Granada-Spain, with whom Eisenberg is developing ProKids.

Lorente has said the sight of children wandering streets alone in cities worldwide inspired him to start the project. He wondered where their families were. He also realized that without a way to identify them, it was impossible to guide them home.

“A baby doesn’t know who they are,” Eisenberg said. “Half of these kids working in sweatshops don’t know where they came from.”

Through the Haitian ambassador to Spain, Lorente offered the use of the ProKids system to reunite children with their parents amid the inevitable flood of adoptions.

With so many bodies still unidentified, it is hard to determine whose parents are alive or dead, Eisenberg said.

“If children are going to be adopted out rapidly, let’s make sure we have their DNA profiles in the event that the parents are alive,” Eisenberg said. “Although it may sound like the greatest thing for them to be sent to the Unites States … there are some parents who want their children back.”

ProKids is scrambling to get an initial supply of 5,000 to 6,000 DNA collection kits to Haiti. Once they arrive, people — possibly United Nations representatives — must be trained to take the samples. DNA can be collected through a finger prick. Workers in Haiti will take them by swabbing the inside of children’s cheeks.

“We’re trying to make the process as simple as humanly possible,” he said.

Global vision

ProKids’ efforts in Haiti are a response to a catastrophic event. But the project’s creators envision a vast international database protecting the estimated 600,000 to 800,000 people trafficked across international borders each year.

Besides being made to work in sweatshops and forced into prostitution, some are forced to have organs removed for sale on the black market. But many are also sold into illegal adoptions, which is where Eisenberg said ProKids might initially have the greatest impact.

A 2007-08 pilot program at a Guatemalan adoption center determined that 46 children were dropped off illegally by someone who was not a blood relative. Kidnapped children, officials believed, were being sold to the adoption center, which, in turn, was selling them for adoption, usually to Americans. Using DNA testing, about two dozen of those children were returned to their families.

Since the pilot study, more than 200 children have been identified, ProKids’ Web site states.

What’s next

Much work remains, Eisenberg said. The lab at UNT will process a significant number of the Haitian DNA samples, but as the project expands, partner labs in other countries will be needed.

Also, DNA collection tends to raise privacy concerns. Eisenberg said the ProKids database only matches the DNA profile with a bar code number. Personal information will be collected in separate databases in each country.

The sheer range of cultural traits and religious beliefs is a challenge. DNA samples, for example, cannot be collected orally in some countries because it is considered offensive to put something in another person’s mouth.

Such identifications can also lead to complicated decisions. Returning children found working in sweatshops to their families seems clear-cut. But what about if an unknowing couple adopts a child and, years later, it’s determined that the child had been kidnapped and sold to the adoption center?

Those are questions for governments and international policies to answer, Eisenberg said.

“We are not naive to think we’re ever going to stop trafficking,” he said. “But once you start making these identifications, you are able to provide law enforcement with investigative leads on how children end up in these situations.”

Resource: Star-Telegram: http://www.star-telegram.com/metro_news/story/1952092.html