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.

[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.

[haruchai]

The legal system for child support came about because plenty of "real fathers" were only too willing to abandon their families when the going got rough or a more winsome piece of ass drifted on by.
There aren't many mothers who haven't feared being own their own raising the kids, regardless of who the father was.
Yup, there are plenty of sluts out there with low morals but they're outnumbered by the dicks, not the cucks.

Re: Lots of children have the wrong DNA.

[thundercattt]

The visectomy reminds me of my buddy. Living with his GF, she comes home "I'm pregnant!" All happy happy joy joy. He starts hauling her stuff to the curb. She is furious calling him deadbeat etc. He goes "I got snipped @18". All she said was "o". And helped carry the rest of her stuff out.

Re: Lots of children have the wrong DNA.

[93 Escort Wagon]

10 to 30 kids in my 1000 kid high school would be a lot of bastards.

It's been quite a while since I was in high school, but I remember a much higher percentage of bastards than that.

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]

The legal system for child support came about because plenty of "real fathers" were only too willing to abandon their families when the going got rough or a more winsome piece of ass drifted on by.

What revisionist twaddle. Child support after a divorce came about because originally fathers kept the children and got both the benefits of custody and the responsibility to support them. Then we decided that children belong with their mothers, but financial responsibility should stay with the fathers.

The 'deadbeat dad' narrative came about as a way to defend this clearly unfair system, and the fact the fathers (quite reasonably) feel more responsible for children that they are allowed to be the fathers of, rather than kids they aren't allowed to see.

The problem the GP describes, with cuckolds paying child support for kids that aren't theirs, stems from the same sexist urge. In most cases a DNA test can only give a man responsibility (even if they were underage and she wasn't, even if he was unconscious) but not remove it (he was married to her at the time and waited until the child was six months old, he 'acted like a father').

And as a side note, it's incredibly crass of you to try to justify the ill treatment of some men by pointing out the bad behavior of other men.

Re: Lots of children have the wrong DNA.

[haruchai]

On the assumption that you're American, you're wrong
http://www.child-support-laws-...

"This financial dependency theme recurred almost in every children support case decided by the courts of America during the nineteenth century, primarily because newly divorced American mothers in nineteenth-century were almost always forced to live in poverty.

Even families that were well off financially before the divorce found that after the divorce, the father almost always profited and the mother almost always became impoverished. 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.

In addition, if the mother did attempt to find a job for herself, she generally earned less than what a man would make in the same field. "

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.

Re:Lots of children have the wrong DNA.

[clovis]

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

I used to do something similar when I was delivering Pizzas for a living. Whenever one of my girlfriends had a baby, I would drop off the baby instead of the pizza and told them it was theirs. Later the court ordered me to pay 30% of the child's upkeep. Not a total win for me, but I feel like I saved 70% on the cost of raising the kid.

Re: Lots of children have the wrong DNA.

[AutodidactLabrat]

No. The study was based on gene testing in high risk populations for known defects.
It was repeated several times
Seems those women simply "Forgot" where they had been

Bullshit, Todd.

[drinkypoo]

"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.

That's a lot of shit. It's suggesting that people didn't receive what they paid for, and should receive recompense on that basis. It doesn't mean that the child is bad or wrong. It means the clinic is bad and wrong.

If you think giving a couple the wrong genetic material is OK, then why shouldn't you be responsible for footing the bill if someone else knocks up your wife? This is basically clinical cuckoldry. That's not what they paid for.

Re:Bullshit, Todd.

[Anonymous Coward]

The kid does have the wrong genes. They wanted their kid, they got somebody else's kid. It fucking matters!

The clinic is responsible for child support, in the same way a guy would be responsible for child support if he impregnated a woman by accident (protection failed or whatever).

Such a punishment is necessary to prevent this sort of thing. No punishment = widespread malpractice. That's reality.

Re:Bullshit, Todd.

[ScentCone]

The problem is they are not suing over the mistake made by the clinic, but that the child has the wrong genes.

The kid having the wrong genes is the direct fruit of the clinic's malpractice. It's no different than a baby being dropped on its head by the doctor. You don't sue ONLY for the mistake, you sue for the consequences of the mistake. Two parents decide to merge their DNA and make a baby. They do so knowing their, and their families' histories. The clinic chooses to negligently upend that planning with an unknown set of consequences - and robbing the parents of having allowed the father to contribute his traits to the child they've chosen to make. The ramifications are numerous, both emotionally and quite possibly medically, intellectually, etc., for the child. You can't separate the negligence from the life-long consequences.

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.

Re:Bullshit, Todd.

[Kjella]

You didn't even read to the end of the summary, it seems. The problem is they are not suing over the mistake made by the clinic, but that the child has the wrong genes. Suing the clinic over medical malpractice is fine, but the couple has sued for a completely different formulation of the problem.

You keep talking about "right" and "wrong" genes as if it was a flawed designer baby that didn't match the contract specifications. If you make a child, you pay child support. If it's not your child, you don't pay child support. If it doesn't have dad's genes, biologically it isn't his which leaves half of the child's expenses unpaid. If the accidental donor can't be held economically responsible, the clinic should. If a man can have a one night stand and pay for it the next 18 years, I don't see why they can't have one lab accident and pay for it the next 18 years.

I think the clinic is lucky to only pay 30%, I'd say the cuckolded father has every right to disavow this child and for the mother to demand the clinic pays half in the absentee father's place. The man in this couple has essentially agreed to become the adoptive dad of someone else's child and pay 20% of the expenses himself, I think that's overly generous. In fact I bet in the US they'd both sue the hospital for many millions of dollars over the emotional trauma of discovering "their" child isn't their child.

Re:Bullshit, Todd.

[Oligonicella]

From the court's decision:

"In the circumstances, the Court recognises that the Appellant's desire to have a child of her own, with her Husband, is a desire that is a basic human impulse, and its loss is keenly and deeply felt.

"The ordinary human experience is that parents and children are bound by ties of blood and this fact of biological experience - heredity - carries deep socio-cultural significance...

"And when, as in the present case, a person has been denied this experience due to the negligence of others then she has lost something of profound significance and has suffered a serious wrong.

"This loss of 'affinity' can also result in social stigma and embarrassment arising out of the misperceptions of others, as was the case here."

Re:Bullshit, Todd.

[SvnLyrBrto]

The father "propagating his like" and all that does matter in some cultures though. And it's not just a matter of shame, which can be considerable, for the parents. Bastardy can carry a stigma for the child as well that may even persist into adulthood.

I'm not endorsing such beliefs, mind you. Nor am I accusing these parents of holding them. Hell, I neither have nor want kids, for that matter. But the cultural attitudes I described do exist in the world. And they can cause significant problems for the child beyond the, not at all insignificant, medical questions that may arise from unknown parentage.

Dangerous Precedent

[frovingslosh]

This sets a dangerous precedent. If this keep up, fertility clinics will have to start being careful.

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.

The only Reasonable Solution.

[wisnoskij]

This Todd Kuiken is an idiot. What it implies is that this kid is like any other, the responsibility of his parents. And the unique nature of this screwup meant that he was not strictly the responsibility of the couple, at the same time the original donor should not be held responsible for what was done with his sperm without his consent. So the one responsible was ordered to share part of the responsibility for this child, they are just lucky that the court ordered the responsibility be split three ways, and not half for using the wrong sperm, or if they got really vindictive, it would not have been completely unreasonable to have ordered them to pay all of the expenses for this unwanted child.