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Consumer DNA tests revealing misattributed parentage

theatlantic.com

31–40 of 153 posts

Re: Consumer DNA tests revealing misattributed parentage

#31
post #11

Some estimations tell that around 30% of children are not from their official fathers.. People are just unaware of amount of secretes seemingly happy marriages hold

Um no... it's no more than 1-2% in western societies.

Do you have a reference? Not doubting it, but I’m curious to know if this is true.

Re: Consumer DNA tests revealing misattributed parentage

#32
post #29
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe anti-scientific would be a better term. The law explicitly prevents people from finding out information about themselves that is encoded into every cell of their being.

Such laws just can't be made to work. Laws can't fight reality.

That's pretty clearly false. See: China, North Korea.

Re: Consumer DNA tests revealing misattributed parentage

#36
post #32
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such laws just can't be made to work. Laws can't fight reality.

That's pretty clearly false. See: China, North Korea.

Any artifical norm can try to fight reality for some time, but reality eventually ends up winning.

You can't make something work by going against reality. You can pretend it will work by itself - for a while.

This is usually called "delusion" and it takes a lot of resources to maintain it.

Re: Consumer DNA tests revealing misattributed parentage

#37
post #36
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty clearly false. See: China, North Korea.

Any artifical norm can try to fight reality for some time, but reality eventually ends up winning. You can't make something work by going against reality. You can pretend it will work by itself - for a while. This is usually called "delusion" and it takes a lot of resources to maintain it.

Many artificial norms have stuck around for millennia in the face of reality. Many don't want to wait around that long.

Re: Consumer DNA tests revealing misattributed parentage

#38

A little OT and most here probably already know, but genetic genealogy(GEDmatch basically) is starting to be used to solve rape and murder cases. Here's a recent murder case solved a couple weeks ago they announced just on friday that they used genetic genealogy: http://providencejournal.com/news/20180727/how-dna-and-tatto... And here's the first instance that I know of of a non-fatal rape case where the technology w…

It's a good way to work around privacy issues like offenders not wanting/bothering to have their DNA registered.

That's one of the reasons I believe people tend to be a little too protective of their genetic information. For one thing we spread it around, constantly. For another, all our relatives have some or most of that information too.

Re: Consumer DNA tests revealing misattributed parentage

#39
post #7

Some countries, like for example France, make DNA tests pretty much illegal to prevent discovering painful truths like this.

The French government claims that fatherhood is determined by society, and not biology. That is a very unscientific law.

It's not unscientific to define fatherhood in a way that doesn't involve genetic or copulative parentage.

Re: Consumer DNA tests revealing misattributed parentage

#40
post #32
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such laws just can't be made to work. Laws can't fight reality.

That's pretty clearly false. See: China, North Korea.

Sure, but France is very close to other countries where DNA testing is legal. No?
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