Push for jail terms for theft of DNA
The Australian, Leigh Dayton, Science writer, November 11, 2008
A HUSBAND who suspects he is not the father of his children could be jailed for two years if he steals hair or saliva for DNA testing, under legal changes being proposed by the Rudd Government.
Similarly, a private investigator would not be able to obtain a sample of someone's DNA for testing without their permission.
If adopted, the DNA theft laws would also make it illegal to conduct a genetic test on a sample obtained without consent and to disclose the results of any such test.
The proposed changes to the criminal code are contained in a discussion paper released by Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus yesterday.
However, Mr Debus, who has portfolio responsibility for criminal law within the Attorney-General's Department, said: "The proposed new offences don't interfere with the use of DNA testing by the police or courts or lawful access to private paternity testing by parents and guardians."
The proposed laws would not cover overseas online genetic testing services such as 23andMe and deCODEme.
The Australian Law Reform Commission's David Weisbrot said multinational protocols and strategies -- such as those adopted for child abuse and sex crimes -- must be set up to handle DNA theft laws.
The discussion paper on DNA theft was based on recommendations of the ALRC's 2003 report Essentially Yours: The Protection of Human Genetic Information in Australia, which highlighted the need to tighten laws in response to advances in human genetic technology.
The recommendations were accepted in December 2005 by the Howard government, but not acted on. In 2004, the British Human Tissue Act was amended to make DNA theft a criminal offence. The UN's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation in 2003 adopted the International Declaration on Human Genetic Data.
Professor Weisbrot said that, during the ALRC's public hearings, people were most concerned about the misuse of personal genetic information by insurers, employers, angry spouses and journalists tracking down "famous DNA".
"At the time, there were stories about US president Bill Clinton who had his bodyguards collect a pint glass after he had drunk from it in a British pub," he said.
Professor Weisbrot noted that newspapers also reported a plot by "genetic trophy hunters" to acquire a sample of Prince Harry's DNA.
Central to the new discussion paper is the notion -- detailed in the ALRC report -- that non-consensual genetic testing can cause many types of harm, including physical harm if a person is assaulted in order to obtain a sample.
People can also be harmed emotionally if, for instance, their kinship or identity is questioned.
Men's Rights Agency co-director Sue Price said any decision to criminalise non-consensual genetic testing would be "well over the top".
"I had hoped that this had died a normal death, but it seems there are still people looking to prevent DNA testing," Ms Pryce said.
Liam Magill, who was awarded damages of $70,000 in 2001 after DNA paternity testing proved a family friend was the biological father of his two youngest children, agreed.
"The introduction of legislation that looked like this would be a total farce," he said.
Scotland's National Newspaper
96% of women are liars, honest
5,000 women polled
Half the women said that if they became pregnant by another man but wanted to stay with their partner, they would lie about the baby's real father.
Forty-two per cent would lie about contraception in order to get pregnant, no matter the wishes of their partner.
Canada's largest
national newspaper
Mommy's little secret
The article contains info about children's identity fraud at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
December 14, 2002.
Includes interview with employees of Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, Canada who admit they deny children's identity information to husbands/male partners of mothers who want to hide the real identity of their child because they had an affair. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of The Child specifically supports a child's human right to have a relationship with both his/her biological parents. In addition, this article is proof that The Hospital for Sick Children ("Sick Kids") supports paternity fraud.
Further "Sick Kids" supports a mother's rights only, which they view, supersedes 3 other people's rights, namely, the rights of the biological father, the rights of the mother's male partner/husband and the child's identity rights.
One in 25 fathers 'not the daddy'
Up to one in 25 dads could unknowingly be raising another man's child, UK health researchers estimate.
Increasing use of genetic testing for medical and legal reasons means Read More ..uples are discovering the biological proof of who fathered the child.
The Liverpool John Moores University team reached its estimate based on research findings published between 1950 and 2004.
The study appears in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Biological father
Professor Mark Bellis and his team said that the implications of so-called
paternal discrepancy were huge and largely ignored, even though the
incidence was increasing.
In the US, the number of paternity tests increased from 142,000 in 1991 to 310,490 in 2001.
Adulterous woman ordered to pay husband £177,000 in 'moral damages'
The Daily Mail, UK
18th February 2009
An adulterous Spanish woman who conceived three children with her lover has been ordered to pay £177,000 in 'moral damages' to her husband.
The cuckolded man had believed that the three children were his until a DNA test eventually proved they were fathered by another man.
The husband, who along with the other man cannot be named for legal reasons to protect the children's identities, suspected his second wife may have been unfaithful in 2001.
Biology, not heart, provokes women's infidelity
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
January 15, 2009
BEAUTIFUL women who have affairs can now blame it on their sex hormones.
Women with higher levels of oestradiol, a form of oestrogen, not only look and feel more attractive, they are also more likely to cheat on their partners, a new study has found.
One-night-stands are not what interest these flirtatious females, who tend to have bigger breasts, relatively small waists and symmetrical faces as a result of their high levels of oestradiol.
Rather, they adopt a strategy of serial monogamy, say the researchers, led by Kristina Durante of the University of Texas.
Paternity fraud: Is it or should it be a criminal offence under the Criminal Code of Canada?
You be the judge.
Who Knows Father Best?
Feminist organizations including the National Organization of Women (NOW) has objected to legislation that requires the courts to vacate paternity judgments against men who arent, in fact, the father.
Think about that. NOW wants some man, any man, to make child support payments. The woman who doesnt even know who the father is, should not be held responsible for her actions, is a sweet, loving, blameless mother who seeks only to care for her child and if naming some schmuck as father who never saw her before in his life helps her provide for the innocent babe, well then, that's fine.
Innocence is no excuse. Pay up. Read More ..
ABC
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
Broadcast: November 22, 2004
Who's Your Daddy?
Last year, more than 3,000 DNA paternity tests were commissioned by Australian men, and in almost a quarter of those cases, the test revealed that not only had their partners been unfaithful, but the children they thought were theirs had been sired by someone else. Read More ..
DNA: Why the truth can hurt
The Sunday Times
Australia
March 27, 2005
IT sounded too good to be true and it was.
The fairytale that saw Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott reunited with the son he thought he had given up for adoption 27 years ago, ABC sound-recordist Daniel O'Connor, ended this week when DNA tests confirmed another man had fathered Mr O'Connor.
The revelations were devastating for all involved, not least Mr O'Connor.
Still reeling from the emotional reunion with his mother, Kathy Donnelly, and Mr Abbott a few months ago, a simple test of truth has thrown the trio into disarray a situation familiar to thousands of other Australians.
Paternity testing in Australia is a burgeoning industry.
The simplicity of the test cells are collected from a mouth swab grossly underestimates the seriousness of the situation.
Fathers May Get Money Back in Paternity Fraud Cases
18 March, 2005
FindLaw, Australia
Proposed new laws will make it easier for fathers to recover child maintenance payments if DNA testing reveals that they are not the child's father.
The Family Law Amendment Bill 2005 allows people who wrongly believed they were the parent of a child to recover any child maintenance paid or property transferred under an order of a court under the Family Law Act 1975 .
"The bill is intended to make it easier for people who find themselves in this position to take recovery action without the need to initiate separate proceedings for an order from a court of civil jurisdiction, such as a State, Local or Magistrates court," Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said.
Men wage battle on 'paternity fraud'
USA TODAY, by Martin Kasindorf, December 12, 2002
An acid sense of betrayal has been gnawing at Damon Adams since a DNA test showed that he is not the father of a 10-year-old girl born during his former marriage.
"Something changes in your heart," says Adams, 51, a dentist in Traverse City, Mich. "When she walks through the door, you're seeing the product of an affair."
But Michigan courts have spurned the DNA results Adams offered in his motions to stop paying $23,000 a year in child support. Now, Adams is lobbying the state Legislature for relief and joining other men in a national movement against what they call "paternity fraud." Read More ..
Who's the Daddy?
Up to three million Britons may be wrong about who their real father is , experts claim. But using DNA paternity tests to discover the truth can cause its own problems.
BBC, U.K., May 16, 2003
Dad's got blue eyes, Baby brown...
When Tessa found out she was pregnant after fertility treatment, she felt a mix of delight and doubt.
This wasn't simply pre-baby nerves - she suspected that her husband might not be the father. For Tessa had started sleeping with a colleague when the stress of the ongoing treatment became too much.
Keen to build a family with her husband, she let him believe the baby was his. But her lover threatened to reveal all if she ended the affair, and Tessa soon fell pregnant again. This time, her lover started to make nuisance calls to her home.
Tessa had no choice but to tell her husband. "I said to him, 'I've had an affair and you may not be the father of my children.' So with that, he went up the stairs, got dressed and left. And that was it," Tessa says in Women Who Live a Lie, a programme for the BBC's Five Live Report.
Would you wear the jacket?
THERE IS A story I used to find hilarious in my high school years about a not too bright man. He was light skinned, his wife was of similar hue, but their first child was born with very dark complexion (darker dan Bello, blacker dan Blakka).
When the man wondered aloud about the baby's complexion his wife assured him that the child was born dark because the child was conceived in darkness (they had sex with the lights off). The man accepted the explanation. Because he loved his wife dearly, he also ignored the fact that the child had other obvious signs of resemblance to the young dark skinned man who did their gardening. To fix the problem, the husband put flood lights, strobe lights, spotlights and forty other lights in the bed room so there would be no more darkness to create dark babies.
United States
"Duped Dads, Men Fight Centuries-Old Paternity Laws"
"Supporters of paternity identification bills point to a 1999 study by the American Association of Blood Banks that found that in 30 percent of 280,000 blood tests performed to determine paternity, the man tested was not the biological father." Read More ..
Download / view pdf file
American Association of Blood Banks
Parentage Testing Program Unit
Annual Report Summary Testing in 2001
Volume of testing 310,490 for the 2001 study