Who's the daddy? DNA test a

[Ceicei]

“Everyone is purchasing the tests because they’re curious,” said Fogg, who expects to sell at least 52,000 tests this year. “They’re looking to establish questions about their own child or their own paternity.”

“From our perspective, direct-to-consumer genetic tests raise all the same issues for lax government oversight, potentially misleading or false advertising and the potential for making profound medical decisions on the basis of poorly interpreted or understood results,” said Rick Borchelt, a spokesman for the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University.

The Identigene kit includes swabs for collecting cell samples from the inside of the cheeks of the child and the alleged father. Collection of the mother’s cells is optional, but strongly recommended to strengthen the results. The swabs are packaged and mailed to the Sorenson laboratory in Salt Lake City where they’re analyzed. The Sorenson lab is accredited by the AABB, the agency formerly known as the American Association of Blood Banks. Results are reported online, by phone or by mail in three to five business days. They come back as a probability figure that verifies paternity with 98 percent to 99 percent accuracy, Watson said.

Total cost is about $150, including the price of the kit and a $119 laboratory processing fee. For another $200, users can purchase validated tests that meet legal requirements for determining paternity, Fogg said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23814032/

Some question whether this is ethical. Others say the "right to know" is very important. I don't have a problem with this being available. I think most people who may use this would understand that accuracy may not necessarily be guaranteed. What are your thoughts?


- Ceicei

 

[CoryKS]

I don't have a problem with the availability of these tests, but I think the demand for them is a pretty good indication that our society is making its last trip around the toilet bowl.

 

[Empty Hands]

What are your thoughts?

I think most of the people arguing against this have a vested interest in the status quo, and thus are not to be taken particularly seriously on the matter. If you suspect a child is not yours, you have a right to know. Especially before the state puts the full weight of armed coercion behind enforcing your responsibility on that child for 18+ years.

 

[Empty Hands]

...I think the demand for them is a pretty good indication that our society is making its last trip around the toilet bowl.

Infidelity isn't exactly a new phenomenon you know...

 

[CoryKS]

Infidelity isn't exactly a new phenomenon you know...

Ya think?

 

[Empty Hands]

Ya think?

So how does this prove then that our society is "circling the drain"? Infidelity has always been with us. Even with a society that put heavy disapproval on divorce. Over 4 million babies are born each year in the US, so the demand for this test makes about 1.3% of the total. Hardly a social apocalypse.

 

[Ray]

Sounds like a clear message is being sent: Don't put technology in the hands of common people; it's only for the priestcraft of smart people...

 

[Twin Fist]

The only person who fears a polygraph is a liar

The only person who fears a paternity test..............

 

[terryl965]

I don't have a problem with the availability of these tests, but I think the demand for them is a pretty good indication that our society is making its last trip around the toilet bowl.

This I would agree upon

 

[tellner]

Back in the 1950s a young Jared Diamond talked to an older researcher who was in his cups.

The senior scientist was going to bury several years of dedicated work and pretend it didn't happen. He was torn up about it but knew it had to be done or his career and personal life would be ruined. The effects on the larger society were a greater responsibility than he was willing to take on.

Had he developed a cheap easy way of making nuclear weapons?
Did he discover the Fountain that Ponce de Leon failed to find?
Was it mind control implants?

No. No. And no.

He was looking at blood type prevalence in the US and UK. A few of you already see where this is going. Give yourself gold stars.

The samples were taken from newborns and their parents in maternity wards.

Have the rest of you figured it out? No? I'll let the other shoe drop.

Completely as a side effect of the research he determined that at least ten percent of the husbands could not have fathered their wives' children. That's a lower bound since he was only looking at blood group and Rh factors. He believed it would have shaken the social foundations of his day. And he would have been forced out of his career, possibly imprisoned or murdered. So he swore the young scientist to secrecy. The bare fact would not be disclosed until after his death and never his name.

Jared Diamond was as good as his word. He won't say who the medical researcher was.

Jump forward half a century. In the last couple years there's been a few genetic studies worldwide on who did what to whom and whether Little Smedley should call his mother's husband "Dad". It turns out that with more sophisticated ways of determining these things we're no worse off than we were before. Ten to twelve percent of babies are woods-colts. From what I recall that is pretty constant in countries outside North America and the UK.

Society isn't "circling the drain" as Cory puts it. It looks like we're actually slightly more honest than we were five decades ago. But it does mean that cherished romantic notions of "traditional" or shall we say "mythical" absolute fidelity are nonsense. Men and women have always done what men and women have always done. Now we just have better ways of catching them at it. If society as we know it can handle that much inconvenient truth the fault lies in our inability to deal with reality rather than our supposed descent into sexual liscentiousness.

Two millennia ago the Sages who compiled the Talmud said "Be not too harsh with [these] sins. For if our mothers and fathers had not sinned we would not have been born."

 

[Andy Moynihan]

Oh, society absolutely *IS* circling the drain, just this particular reason is nothing to do with it, that's all.

 

[CoryKS]

Jared Diamond was as good as his word. He won't say who the medical researcher was.

Which makes it unverifiable hearsay. Or in layman's terms, ********. More specifically, since the researcher was "in his cups", drunken ********. I would be willing to accept the claim, though, should a real researcher provide the data and sign his name to it. I don't like "it's true, but you'll have to take my word for it" tales, and this sounds a lot like the other 10 Percent Myth.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Eh, doesn't apply to me. I'm a virgin.
That's what I told my son, and I'm sticking to it.

 

[Drac]

When I was injuried I watched the Montel Williams show a few times...The segment of " I don't know who my baby daddy is are the funniest"...

 

[tellner]

Which makes it unverifiable hearsay. Or in layman's terms, ********. More specifically, since the researcher was "in his cups", drunken ********. I would be willing to accept the claim, though, should a real researcher provide the data and sign his name to it. I don't like "it's true, but you'll have to take my word for it" tales, and this sounds a lot like the other 10 Percent Myth.

Cory, Dr. Diamond has an unblemished record for truthfulness in his research gained painstakingly over half a century. With that I'm willing to cut him some slack. When I asked him about the incident I asked if he were willing to testify to the facts under oath. He allowed as how he would be if the occasion came up.

You do not. What you have consistently demonstrated is a tendency to cram your fingers in your ears and scream "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!!" whenever a evidence from the real world does not meet with your prejudices.

Just as a few informal checks on the facts, my father did vasectomies for half a century. There were cases where the wife of the vasectomized turned up pregnant. In every single one of those his sperm count was, umm, zero. The genetic studies - more rigorous and recent - have been done worldwide. They are consistent across cultures and continents. In the oh-so-wonderful 1950s approximately half of first births to married couples were less than full term. That's an awful lot of premies.

Check out a few books like The Way We Never Were. The facts are beyond dispute. Most men's first sex up until the first quarter of the twentieth century or thereabouts was with prostitutes. In the 18th and 19th century a good case could be made that most adult men got the majority of their sex from working girls.

But of course, the Sanctity of Marriage was inviolable. Married people never had sex outside Holy Matrimony. It was only the hairy-legged bark eating 60s liberals who changed everything.

The facts are against you which is why I fully expect three or four choruses of "You're a nasty evil liar who hates America." Don't bother. I've heard it before. It's not going to convince anyone.