Courts still don’t understand chimerism – which has been the source of injustice when using DNA testing. Everone is at least slightly chimeric, typically having 50000 or so of their mothers cells. Get a transplant, you have more. Often, one siamese twin is complete absorbed, and the resulting person has two sets of DNA. For instance, a mother applies for welfare. They do a maternity test, which comes up negative, and instead of helping, they take all her kids away – despite testimony from both the father and the obstetrician that they personally witnessed/delivered those kids from her body. What happened? Her ovaries were from her siamese twin.
A star athlete wins a championship, but they take his gold medal away after a blood test to check for “blood doping” (getting a blood transfusion before a competition to boost performance). A doctor later takes multiple DNA samples and shows that the athletes body has two sets of DNA, and all of his blood DNA matches some part of his body. There was no blood doping. But the medal has already been given to someone else.
I could go on, but courts/juries don’t understand the limitations of DNA testing.
Courts still don’t understand chimerism – which has been the source of injustice when using DNA testing. Everone is at least slightly chimeric, typically having 50000 or so of their mothers cells. Get a transplant, you have more. Often, one siamese twin is complete absorbed, and the resulting person has two sets of DNA. For instance, a mother applies for welfare. They do a maternity test, which comes up negative, and instead of helping, they take all her kids away – despite testimony from both the father and the obstetrician that they personally witnessed/delivered those kids from her body. What happened? Her ovaries were from her siamese twin.
A star athlete wins a championship, but they take his gold medal away after a blood test to check for “blood doping” (getting a blood transfusion before a competition to boost performance). A doctor later takes multiple DNA samples and shows that the athletes body has two sets of DNA, and all of his blood DNA matches some part of his body. There was no blood doping. But the medal has already been given to someone else.
I could go on, but courts/juries don’t understand the limitations of DNA testing.