Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Flip

1 2 ··· 8 9 10 11 12 13

Original poster

To think all babies should be DNA tested at birth

314 replies

ohagape · 04/12/2015 10:25

After reading that awful thread in step parenting where the poor guy wasn't even his 'sons' father and handed loads of money over to the horrible sounding mother, I really think all babies should be DNA tested as soon as they are born with the potential father/s, whether from a good relationship or not.

It would save a lot of heartbreak and wasted time and money. It can easily be told by blood types. My whole life my mum told me I had a different blood type. Then when I found out at my booking bloods and told her she got really confused about my dad's blood type. I really thought my dad wasn't my dad so he went and did a DNA test to reassure me. AIBU to think this should be a routine thing at all births and father's name shouldn't be on the birth certificate until it's done?

OP posts:

Lweji · 05/12/2015 10:32

A lot of father's would be told that the paternity test was negative, but actually they are the father, but it can't be shown.

How do you work that out?????

sharoncarol43 · 05/12/2015 10:33

There are countries where ever baby is DNA tested, and that information handed to the police and justice department only, but there have been cases of suspected leaks of private information even there.

Lweji · 05/12/2015 10:36

As for mishandling info, you realise that if anyone wanted they could take as much dna from any baby and their mothers as they'd want with no consent at all?
All the discarded placentas and cords. All the blood lost.
Blood is already taken from babies and mothers anyway. We have to trust the NHS not to misuse it.

Lweji · 05/12/2015 10:37

Sharon
Have you realised how many errors you have included in your posts?

sharoncarol43 · 05/12/2015 10:38

A lot of father's would be told that the paternity test was negative, but actually they are the father, but it can't be shown.

How do you work that out?????

You can genuinely be the father, but the DNA test come back negative.

and no one has the faintest idea how many fathers this would apply to.

Estimates vary from one in thousands, to one in 20.

This is because cells for DNA tests are available from your cheek, but babies are produced using sperm from the testes (obviously), and the two sites on your body are quite distant from each other, and may not contain the same DNA

even is you extract DNA from the testes, which is an entirely different procedure we are not equipped or st up for, even if the man was happy to give permission, the DNA in the right testicle could be different from the DNA in the left, and who knows which side the sperm that the baby was conceived from came from!!

sharoncarol43 · 05/12/2015 10:39

come to that, mothers have also had negative DNA tests, when the child has been seen coming out of them!!!

sharoncarol43 · 05/12/2015 10:39

Have you realised how many errors you have included in your posts?

None at all, this is my area of expertise.

sharoncarol43 · 05/12/2015 10:41

As for mishandling info, you realise that if anyone wanted they could take as much dna from any baby and their mothers as they'd want with no consent at all?

legally, no lab would analyse it without the proper legal procedures followed, or they would have committed a crime.

Lweji · 05/12/2015 10:41

That is one reason fathers are told about the provability that they are.
It cannot be shown that they really are.
In contrast to your earlier post

DrDreReturns · 05/12/2015 10:43

There is so much information that can be revealed through a dna test - a paternity test looks at non coding areas of dna so as long as that was all they profiled they wouldn't be able to get other information apart from identity data.
I'm not a fan of this idea btw, but the test they use doesn't contain useful info for disease screening, ethnicity etc

DrDreReturns · 05/12/2015 10:46

Also a paternity test can conclusively excluded a putative father, but it can't definitely say someone is the father. It can to a very high probability, but not 100%

Lweji · 05/12/2015 10:50

In fact, you can't be 100% sure either way.
And sperm could be used for testing if there are suspicions of different dna in different regions.

FannyTheChampionOfTheWorld · 05/12/2015 10:51

As for mishandling info, you realise that if anyone wanted they could take as much dna from any baby and their mothers as they'd want with no consent at all? All the discarded placentas and cords. All the blood lost. Blood is already taken from babies and mothers anyway. We have to trust the NHS not to misuse it.

Sure lweji but there's not much an individual can do about that. If you want to use NHS facilities to give birth, or even have midwives in your home, that's the risk you take. Presumably private midwives or hospitals could just as easily misuse blood, cords etc too, so the only way round it is to freebirth. Similarly, I'm aware that the NHS could be doing anything with the blood they took from me during pregnancy and my babies after birth, but I'm wiling to take that risk because of the benefits. Whereas DNA testing, for a lot of people, involves similar risks for no good reason at all.

abbieanders · 05/12/2015 11:02

His pregnant girlfriend is batshit crazy

Of course she is. Just a pity he had unprotected sex with a loon, isn't it? Why oh why is it impossible for Mr Penis to be wise before the event? Why oh why are women with children men don't want to support always dangerously crazy? So many questions.

Who is going to give permission for this information to be taken, the baby cannot give consent.

It has to be the mother, surely, since no other parent will exist in law until the results of the test are available.

bruffin · 05/12/2015 11:08

Lweji
There have been cases of chimera in both men and women where they have two different dna in the body due to and obsorbsation of a twin in early pregnancy. One woman was at the point of having children taken away from her because the dna did not match, but for the fact she was pregnant at the time and the new baby was tested at delivery, that they found out that her twins dna lived in her ovaries and nowhere else.

expatinscotland · 05/12/2015 11:54

Chimerism is incredibly rare. My daughter was a chimera due to allogenic stem cell transplant, but for it to occur naturally is very very rare.

Catsize · 05/12/2015 12:07

come to that, mothers have also had negative DNA tests, when the child has been seen coming out of them!!!

Devious women. Hiding babies like that to con the authorties...

FannyTheChampionOfTheWorld · 05/12/2015 12:08

It is very rare, I'd be more worried about human error. Which would doubtless abound. And data protection.

abbieanders · 05/12/2015 13:22

What happens in the case of an emergency? I knew that my husband (presumptive and actual father of my daughter) would be legally empowered to make emergency decisions for me and the best baby during pregnancy.

If he hadn't been proven father, would my parents have had the responsibility? Or a randomer?

Gileswithachainsaw · 05/12/2015 13:42

abby

maybe they would have to dna test your parents first

so your care would he down to random people

VestalVirgin · 05/12/2015 14:09

@abbieanders: In a world where common sense is applied, your husband would be legally empowered to make emergency decisions for you and your baby because you chose to give him that power.

It is nonsensical to give men the legal right to make decisions over a woman's baby just because they once put their penises into that woman's vagina and contributed some DNA.

abbieanders · 05/12/2015 14:43

And I wouldn't suggest otherwise, VV. My point related specifically to marriage where the presumption is that the children of a married woman are also the children of her husband. I think people who get married are generally happy for this to be the case. Routinely testing all babies will break this assumption in marriage, I think. If you have married someone, in part to make them your next of kin, it would create an odd anomaly.

clam · 05/12/2015 14:54

As others have intimated, why the hell should I subject my baby to a DNA test, just because there are some people who can't keep track of who they sleep with?

MrsDeVere · 05/12/2015 16:53

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

RaspberryOverload · 05/12/2015 17:42

expatinscotland

Chimerism is incredibly rare. My daughter was a chimera due to allogenic stem cell transplant, but for it to occur naturally is very very rare.

You know, I'm just wondering how we can be certain of that? As DNA testing isn't routine, we're never really going to know how common or not it actually is. Anyway, that's a side issue, an idle curiosity.

I still don't support routine testing. If people want to do this, fine, they can pay for it.

Flip

1 2 ··· 8 9 10 11 12 13

Swipe left for the next trending thread