In Michael Mosley: Nine Months That Made You, the eponymous host meets Cheryl Maynard, who was born without fingerprints because of the genetic disorder adermatoglyphia.
While we take the swirly lines on our fingers that act as our unique markers for granted, those born without them face the unusual challenge of identifying their very being, as do the authorities.
But the flipside is you could use that to your advantage – if you wanted to. As Mosely says, “To the authorities, this woman is invisible.”
What causes adermatoglyphia?
Michael Mosley compares his finger (right) to Cheryl Maynard’s printless one (left). Source: SBS
When taking a fingerprint of someone with the condition, “instead of having a nice, regular pattern of concentric circles, you see a smear,” says Professor Eli Sprecher, Director, Department of Dermatology at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Israel.
It’s an extremely rare condition, with only four extended families in the world known to have it.
Professor Sprecher and Professor Peter Itin of University Hospital Basel, Switzerland studied a Swiss family with the disease and found that nine out of 16 members had adermatoglyphia, confirming it was genetic. In 2011, they discovered the cause, a mutation in the SMARCAD1 gene, which is involved in developing fingerprints in the womb.
“We are all very much fascinated by fingerprints, which carve a natural identity for each of us, yet nobody had even the slightest clue of which protein causes this,” Professor Sprecher says. “This is the first identification of an element that is vital to form fingerprints.”
The downsides
Cheryl Maynard’s employment opportunities have been affected because her lack of fingerprints complicates identification. Source: SBS
Securing employment can also be a huge issue for people without fingerprints, as Maynard, one in the fifth generation of her family with the condition, found out.
"I applied for work at a jail facility, and they were naturally fingerprinting people who were going to be employees," she told National Geographic. "I kept hearing, ‘Of course you have fingerprints.' And five or six different technicians were telling one another, ‘You're doing this wrong, let me do this.' I have to tell them I was born without them. Things like that are a problem. It has delayed me [from] getting jobs."
Apart from identification nightmares, the only serious physical symptom of adermatoglyphia is a reduced number of sweat glands, which means an inability to sweat properly. "Because they cannot evacuate heat, they can develop heat stroke," says Sprecher.
"I swam competitively as a kid, but some parents would always ask why I was sitting on the side of the pool,” Maynard explains. “My mum would have to tell them, ‘Even though the water is cold, she's overheated from swimming.'"
The upsides
Without fingerprints, you could literally get away with murder.
But if crime is your bag (and we would never condone a life of crime), you could potentially commit the perfect one(s) – if you’re careful. While there are other ways to ID a perp, fingerprinting, still not a perfect science, remains key. Last year alone, 10,000 fingerprint matches were made in Victoria.
Not only will you never be on a database of fingerprints, people with adermatoglyphia also have smooth palms and soles on the feet and no toe prints to add to the ghost-crim kit.
You’d have an advantage over lawbreakers that have attempted, usually very painfully, to erase their fingerprints from their body. Depression-era gangsters became renowned for it. John Dillinger famously tried by burning off the tips of his fingers in acid and members of the Barker-Karpis Gang hired a Mob doctor who did an incompetently stabby job. But they should have been thinking bigger – the very same unique ridges of their fingertips were on the surface of their palms.
Watch Michael Mosley: Nine Months That Made You on Monday December 4 at 8:30pm on SBS.
