Is your child really your child, Papa? (China Daily) Updated: 2005-08-12 06:06
LONDON: One in 25 fathers could unknowingly be raising another man's child,
British scientists said yesterday.
Researchers at Liverpool's John Moores University examined the findings of
dozens of studies, published over the past 54 years, on cases of paternal
discrepancy - where a man is proved not to be the biological father of his
child.
The studies, most of them peer reviewed, came from countries as varied as the
United States, Finland, New Zealand, South Africa and Mexico.
The findings of the studies varied dramatically - some concluded that only
one man in 100 is not the father of his child while others put the figure as
high as 30 per cent.
The Liverpool researchers calculated the median figure at around 4 per cent,
suggesting that as many as one in 25 men worldwide is not the biological father
of a child he believes to be his.
"The importance lies not so much in the figure itself but in the
implications, given that as a society we are increasingly making our decisions
on the basis of genetics," said one of the researchers, Professor Mark Bellis.
"If, for example, someone knows that their father had a history of hereditary
heart disease, they might be tempted to alter their own diet," he said.
"Obviously they need to be making that decision on the basis of accurate
information about who their father really is."
Bellis said that while mix-ups of semen during artificial insemination
accounted for some cases of paternal discrepancy, the majority were due to a
woman having sexual relationships outside marriage.
He said in Britain, 20 per cent of women in marriages or long-term
relationships have had affairs, adding that the figures for other developed
countries was similar.
Around a third of pregnancies in Britain are unplanned, increasing the risk
of paternal discrepancy.
Writing in the British Medical Association's Journal of Epidemiology and
Community Health, the scientists called for further research in the area.
"(We) cannot simply ignore this difficult issue," they said.
(China Daily 08/12/2005 page6)
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