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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."

6 of 267 comments (clear)

  1. Bullshit, Todd. by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:Bullshit, Todd. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Bullshit, Todd. by ScentCone · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    3. Re:Bullshit, Todd. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  2. Re: Lots of children have the wrong DNA. by thundercattt · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  3. Re: Lots of children have the wrong DNA. by haruchai · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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. "

    --
    Pain is merely failure leaving the body