Can Parents Sue If Their Kid Is Born With the 'Wrong' DNA? (gizmodo.com)

Long-time reader randomErr quotes Gizmodo: It's a nightmare scenario straight out of a primetime drama: a child-seeking couple visits a fertility clinic to try their luck with in-vitro fertilization, only to wind up accidentally impregnated by the wrong sperm. In a fascinating legal case out of Singapore, the country's Supreme Court ruled that this situation doesn't just constitute medical malpractice. The fertility clinic, the court recently ruled, must pay the parents 30% of upkeep costs for the child for a loss of 'genetic affinity.' In other words, the clinic must pay the parents' child support not only because they made a terrible medical mistake, but because the child didn't wind up with the right genes...

"It's suggesting that the child itself has something wrong with it, genetically, and that it has monetary value attached to it," Todd Kuiken, a senior research scholar with the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University, told Gizmodo. "They attached damages to the genetic makeup of the child, rather than the mistake. That's the part that makes it uncomfortable. This can take you in all sort of fucked up directions."

Comments

Lots of children have the wrong DNA.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes a woman will trick a man into raising another man's child. It is more common than you think.

Re:Lots of children have the wrong DNA.

[haruchai]

Sometimes a woman will trick a man into raising another man's child. It is more common than you think.

There are plenty of cucks out there

Re:Lots of children have the wrong DNA.

[Kjella]

There are plenty of cucks out there

Actually research indicate there aren't, at least not after birth control, legalized abortion and the awareness of DNA tests. Current estimates are 1-3% of the population. The excessively high numbers you get quoted from time to time are because they've self-selected groups where the paternity is in doubt, in these low confidence selections it's 10-30%.

Re: Lots of children have the wrong DNA.

[Reaper9889]

If I remember that study correctly, it was based on gene testing and only done when people were suspicious. So in 4/5 cases where people were suspicious, it turned out to be a false alarm. It seemes very reasonable to suggest that if you are not suspicious, then the odds are higher that the child is your own.

Re: Lots of children have the wrong DNA.

[yndrd1984]

This occurred because the men were suddenly free from the expenses of the family, whereas the women were forced to take on the financial burden of raising the children.

Exactly, this is after men no longer had default custody of the children after a divorce and people were trying to put financial responsibility back on his shoulders. I'm sorry if my extremely brief overview missed some of the twists and turns between the old common-law system and the one we have today.

But how is this a defense of ' "real fathers" were only too willing to abandon their families'? The fact you quoted was true no matter who initiated the divorce or for what reason.

And again, you seem to be suggesting that the bad behavior of those men justified the unfairness to all men. I'm suggesting that the number of 'dad abandons family on a whim' phenomena was blown out of proportion by the unfortunate victims of those cases, bigots, and people who saw a political advantage to be gained, and that even if it was true it wouldn't justify a wholesale shift in legal responsibility.

the father almost always profited and the mother almost always became impoverished

And the mother almost always got to raise the children and the father did not. I agree that both were unfair, but at least they weren't both unfair in the same direction, as they are tending toward now.

Goes to the heart of capitalism

[gurps_npc]

Capitalism is based on the idea that both sides agree to exchange what is promised, not merely something someone else thinks is close enough.

You can't offer to sell "Lamborghini" and deliver a kit car with a Lamborghini shell and a 1985 K car motor under the hood.

If they do not want to be legally held responsible for what the services they do, then the answer is simple - do it for free, with disclaimers about not promissing anything.

Because the second they charge money for their services, they become legally responsible to actually fulfilling what they offer, rather than the mistake. And yes, the penalties correspond to the costs and pain incurred, rather than merely being limited to the amount they charged.

Re:Bullshit, Todd.

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Someone with mod points needs to make this +6.

ATimes has better coverage: http://www.atimes.com/article/world-first-singapore-court-rules-parents-deserve-kids-genes/

The couple paid to have the Chinese mother's egg fertilized with the German father's sperm in vitro and then implanted in the mother, where it was to gestate and be born as their child, of their genes. Instead, the lab used an Indian man's sperm. The laboratory cuckolded the father and gave him a child that does not look like him. It has different genes and a darker skin tone than either parent. It will always look different from the father, and both the father and child, as well as everyone else who meets them, will know instantly that the mother gave birth to a child belonging to a man other than her husband.

That clinic needs to be punished, and other fertility clinics ought to be worried at how easy it could be for that mistake to destroy patients' confidence in the clinics. Why would you go to a fertility clinic now, when you know what they could do to your family? The fertility clinics need to band together and regulate themselves heavily in order to bolster confidence that they are not cuckolding factories.