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Medical and Legal Developments in Paternity Testing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2021

Sheila Taub
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Extract

Recently a front-page article in the New York Times reported on a new method of blood-testing for paternity determination which is “revolutionizing the way courts determine the identity of a child's father in paternity cases.” The HLA (Human Leucocyte Antigen) test represents a significant advance over the standard red blood cell antigen tests for paternity. The large number of genetically determined factors in the HLA system makes it possible, by typing the blood of mother, child, and accused father, to either 1) rule out the possibility that the man could be the child's biological father in a large number of cases where the man is falsely accused; or 2) show that the accused man has a high probability of being the child's biological father, where the possibility of paternity has not been ruled out. Red blood cell typing, because of the much smaller number of factors examined, could only exclude a falsely accused male in a relatively small number of cases.

Type
Article
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 9 , Issue 6 , October 1981 , pp. 8 - 11
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1981

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References

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