BBC has a fascinating story on “The Family with no fingerprints,” where the men in the Sarker family share a genetic mutation that causes them to have no fingerprints.
The family lives in the northern district of Rajshahi in Bangladesh, and not having fingerprints has led to some unique challenges. In 2010, Bangladesh made National ID cards mandatory for all adults and the database requires a thumbprint. Fingerprints also became mandatory for passports and driver’s licenses, and the father, Amal Sarker, had to obtain a special certificate from a medical board.
In 2016, the government made it mandatory to match a fingerprint with the national database in order to purchase a Sim card for a mobile phone. According to BBC News:
The rare condition likely afflicting the Sarker family is called Adermatoglyphia. It first became widely known in 2007 when Peter Itin, a Swiss dermatologist, was contacted by a woman in the country in her late twenties who was having trouble entering the US. Her face matched the photograph on her passport, but customs officers were not able to record any fingerprints. Because she didn’t have any. [source]
If you want to learn more, head over to BBC for the full story.
