It had to happen eventually!
You can now walk into a drug store and purchase a paternity test,
according to an article written by Andrew Pollack in the "New York
Times" November 26, 2007. If interested, you can find the article at
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/business/26gene.html
It doesn't say which loci on which chromosomes are being analyzed, but
they would surely be different than the ones tested for our purposes
in genealogy. Swabs are provided for father, mother, and child, and
results will be available five days after Sorenson Genomics receives
the swabs.
The article does say that the results probably would not hold up in
court.
I sometimes wonder if Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was looking into the
future at DNA testing when he wrote, "A little learning is a dangerous
thing."
Lura Southard
List Administrator,
CARROLL-DNA(a)rootsweb.com