In 2004, evolution itself served as a witness for the prosecution in the case of the
State of Washington versus Anthony Eugene Whitfield. Whitfield contracted HIV in an Oklahoma prison, and first learned about his infection in 1992. After his release in 1995, he had more than a thousand sexual encounters with 17 different women, even fathering children with three of them. He rarely wore a condom, never told any of his partners about his infection and flatly denied it when asked...
To demonstrate Whitfield’s guilt, the prosecution had to show that he had wilfully exposed women to HIV, that his five HIV-positive partners contracted their infections from him. Fortunately,
David Hillis from the University of Texas and
Michael Metzker from Baylor College of Medicine knew exactly how to do that. They had evolutionary biology on their side...
Read more at Discover Magazine's blog,
Not Exactly Rocket Science.
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