Paternity Tests: Not Just for the Rich
"You can send us almost anything, and we can get DNA out of it," says Howard Coleman, CEO of Genelex, a paternity-testing lab in Seattle. "Anything that someone's had contact with, and we can give you a very conclusive answer."
The simplicity of gathering DNA, and the public's growing knowledge that every used coffee cup tells a story, has increased the opportunity for fraud in paternity cases. Kerkorian's former wife admitted using saliva from one of his grown daughters to try to prove that Kerkorian was Kira's father. State child-support programs, which pay for the bulk of paternity testing, require the parties being tested to appear in person at a designated testing site in order to establish a "chain of custody." Labs certified by the American Association of Blood Banks follow standards to assure a chain of custody. Still, fraud happens. Men will send a buddy in to give a sample, or a woman will bring in a child other than the one in question.
Parents-to-be who aren't willing to wait can find out their baby's status before the wee one is born. The process isn't cheap or easy. Chorionic villi sampling and amniocentesis, which are used to test fetal DNA for genetic disorders such as Down syndrome, can also be used to identify the baby's father in the first or second trimester. Dawn, who asked that her last name not be used, found herself shopping for prenatal paternity testing after she went through a rough patch in her life, had a one-night stand, and found out she was pregnant.
"My husband was worried that it wasn't his," she says. "I knew it was my husband's baby, but he wanted to be 100 percent sure that it was his, so he could be excited through the pregnancy."
The couple found GeneTree, a DNA-testing company that offered prenatal genetic testing, on the Internet, and paid $445 for the test. Dawn's obstetrician agreed to do an amniocentesis and send the genetic material to GeneTree, which compared the sample with those sent in by Dawn and her husband. The baby, to be born this summer, is his.
"It would be nicer if it wasn't so expensive," says Dawn, 27, "but it meant more to us to relieve that anxiety and worry."
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