Can You Find Out the Father of a Baby Before It's Born
Before Nascency, Dad's ID
It is an uncomfortable question that, in today's world, is often asked by expectant mothers who had more than than ane male person partner at the time they became pregnant. Who is the begetter?
With more than than half of births to women under 30 now out of matrimony, it is a question that may arise more than often.
Now blood tests are condign bachelor that can determine paternity as early equally the eighth or 9th calendar week of pregnancy, without an invasive procedure that could cause a miscarriage.
Besides relieving feet, the test results might allow women to cease a pregnancy if the preferred man is not the begetter — or to go along information technology if he is.
Men who conspicuously know they are the male parent might be more willing to support the adult female financially and emotionally during the pregnancy, which some studies suggest might lead to healthier babies.
And if the tests gain legal credence, some lawyers say, women and state governments might one day pursue child back up payments without having to wait until the birth. Nether current law, "until and unless the pregnancy produces a child, any costs associated with it are regarded equally the woman's personal trouble," said Shari Motro, a police professor at the Academy of Richmond.
The testing itself, however, tin exist awkward because information technology requires a claret sample from at least one of the possible fathers.
Courtney Herndon, after breaking upwardly with her beau, had a brief relationship with a homo she regarded more than as a friend. She found herself significant at historic period xix, without knowing which human was the male parent.
The friend also wanted to know, then he agreed to the testing. He turned out to be the father, and the two agreed on kid support fifty-fifty before the baby was born.
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"I got the exam washed and was able to become on with my life," said Ms. Herndon, who lives in Fort Polk, La.
Estimates of the extent of paternal doubt vary.
Studies accept found a discrepancy rate — when the presumed begetter is not the biological father — of anywhere from 0.8 percent to 30 percent, with the median beingness three.7 percentage, according to one review of such studies. Another study found that about nine percent of birth certificates in Florida, fifty-fifty excluding births to teenage mothers, did not list the total names of the father, though information technology was non clear how much of this was related to dubiety. Infant mortality was college in those cases than if the father's proper name was on the nascency document.
Information technology has already been possible to make up one's mind paternity during pregnancy using amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling, the aforementioned medical procedures used to examination a fetus for Downward syndrome. Merely those procedures are invasive and carry a small take chances of inducing a miscarriage, so they are rarely used for paternity testing.
By contrast, the new tests crave only blood samples from the meaning woman and the potential father. And doctors generally do non have to be involved.
That could vastly expand testing, said Sara Katsanis of Duke University's Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy. She is planning a report with one of the testing companies to see if prenatal paternity testing can reduce a pregnant woman'south stress.
Some noninvasive paternity tests have been offered over the Internet for well-nigh a decade, and there have been various complaints about inaccurate or even fraudulent results.
But experts say the engineering science has advanced to the point that such testing can at present be done reliably. A brief paper describing one such test, developed by a visitor called Ravgen, was published recently in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.
"I have no dubiety that these tests volition work clinically," said Dr. Mark I. Evans, a professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and managing director of Comprehensive Genetics, a medical exercise in New York that specializes in prenatal testing.
The tests clarify fragments of DNA from the fetus that are present in the mother's claret in tiny amounts. The same approach is at present also existence used to noninvasively determine the gender of the fetus or whether it has Down's syndrome. And researchers recently demonstrated that they could even determine a fetus's entire genome this way.
Ravgen, a small company in Columbia, Medico., has been offering its exam on a limited basis and charges $950 to $1,650, depending on the circumstances, said Dr. Ravinder Dhallan, the principal executive.
Another test was developed by a company in Silicon Valley called Natera, and is marketed past Dna Diagnostics Center, a leading provider of conventional paternity tests. Thousands of the prenatal tests take been ordered since going on auction terminal August, executives say. The price is $1,775, compared with around $500 for a conventional postbirth paternity test.
Paradigm
Neither test has received a certification for accurateness that is necessary for utilize in child custody cases, though Natera has practical. The certifying system, the AABB, is seriously considering whether it should certify prenatal tests, said Eduardo Nunes, senior director for policy, standards and global evolution at the organization, formerly known as the American Association of Blood Banks.
Nevertheless, some experts urge caution. Natera has non still published any data well-nigh its test in peer-reviewed journals. Ravgen's paper in The New England Journal of Medicine discussed just thirty samples. (The test correctly distinguished the father from a randomly called human being in all 30 cases.)
The tests could generate controversy if they led to more abortions. All the same, Matthew Rabinowitz, master executive of Natera, said that if a woman were intent on terminating a pregnancy based on paternity, she could nevertheless become an invasive examination. And Dr. Dhallan of Ravgen said the test could persuade women who learned they were significant after a rape to go on the baby if they learned the rapist was not the father.
Ravgen's test has been used in a murder case. In 2008, Michael Roseboro, a funeral domicile managing director in Lancaster Canton, Pa., was accused of killing his wife, Jan, whose trunk was plant in the family swimming puddle.
To plant a motive, prosecutors wanted to prove that Mr. Roseboro was having an affair with another woman, who was significant. But they did not want to expect until the babe was born.
"Nosotros became concerned that she might accept an abortion, or something would happen and we'd never exist able to decide whose child it was," said Craig Stedman, the commune attorney in Lancaster County.
The evidence from the prenatal exam was not introduced at trial, however, considering Mr. Roseboro somewhen conceded that he was the father. Mr. Roseboro, who notwithstanding proclaims his innocence in his married woman's death, was sentenced to life in prison.
It is possible that early testing could mean more paternal support for a pregnant woman.
One Seattle-expanse adult female said that when she was meaning, with 2 possible fathers, "Neither one really wanted to be involved then find out the baby wasn't theirs afterward."
When the prenatal test showed that the begetter was her former boyfriend, he attended the commitment and supported the child. The woman spoke on the condition of anonymity, explaining, "I'm not proud of not knowing who my son's father was."
In some cases DNA is not destiny. Ms. Herndon'southward test showed that the baby was not her ex-boyfriend'southward. Only they got back together and married, and he accustomed the child, who is now sixteen months quondam.
"We view our girl as ours, mine and my husband's," Ms. Herndon said. The biological father sends gifts and pays child support.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/health/paternity-blood-tests-that-work-early-in-a-pregnancy.html
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