DNA As A Tool for Social Justice: Service Learning and Paternity Testing in Tanzania, Africa

After the author returned from a pilot trip to Tanzania, she began to develop an idea and a syllabus for a service-learning course that would engage students in the DNA Human Identification Testing (DNA-HIT) Tanzania project as research assistants. The students would accompany her on a "saliva safari" through rural Tanzania, gathering saliva samples from members of reproductively isolated tribes like the Masai and Meru. Later, they would process the samples at the Muhimbili University College of Health Sciences (MUCHS) in Dar es Salaam, extracting and quantifying the DNA, and training the MUCHS scientists, technicians, and students in these techniques.