* Mobile clinic offers paternity, other biological tests
* U.S. demand for DNA testing steadily increasing
* Experts concerned about accuracy, psychological impact
By Lily Kuo
NEW
YORK, Aug 22 (Reuters) - A mobile DNA testing facility that looks more
like a motor home than a medical clinic is raising questions about the
ramifications of quick and easy tests to determine paternity and other
biological connections.
Once a time-consuming and complicated
process, DNA testing has become so accessible that experts worry
families and individuals may not be properly prepared for the results.
A
28-foot (8.5-meter) recreational vehicle cruising around New York City
emblazoned with the question "Who's Your Daddy?", and offering
on-the-spot DNA testing services starting at $299, has renewed those
concerns.
The clinic, operated by a New York company called Health Street, started in 2010 but was revamped two months ago.
Passersby
can hail the conspicuous brown and blue Winnebago to have DNA samples
taken by a technician, packaged and sent to a laboratory in Ohio.
Results are returned within three to five business days. Mandatory
prescriptions for the tests from a customer's physician can be faxed via
the Internet to the RV.
While it is common for DNA testing
distributors, companies who take the samples and send them to labs for
analysis, to offer mobile collection services, Health Street appears to
be the first to splash exactly what it does on the vehicle. "DNA
TESTING" in bold red lettering is painted on the side.
Jared
Rosenthal, who founded Health Street and drives the RV, recounts some of
the people affected by his service: Two women who learned they were
half-sisters, and a man whose suspicion that he might be the father of a
friend's daughter was confirmed.
"It's just such a serious, fundamental question ... who are your children? Who are your parents?" Rosenthal, 42 said.
Experts
say there has been a steady increase in demand for such tests in the
United States, reaching close to 500,000 a year, according to Michael
Baird, director of DNA Diagnostics, a DNA testing laboratory, in part
because the rate of births to unmarried women has also been increasing.
In
2010, at least 382,199 relationship tests were conducted in the United
States, although the total is likely higher because some labs don't
submit data, according to the AABB, formerly known as the American
Association of Blood Banks, which accredits relationship testing
facilities.
State child-support agencies make up the bulk of this
demand, but experts said the number of people simply seeking answers,
and the accompanying number of venues and ways to test for family
relationships, have increased.
Susan Crockin, a lawyer who teaches at
Georgetown Law Center and specializes in reproductive technology, said
families should be careful of the reliability of the growing variety of
relationship tests around the country, which range from at-home DNA kits
that critics say can be subject to contamination, to on-site tests used
to prove legal paternity.
"The underlying issues are obviously the quality of testing," Crockin said.
Health
Street's DNA tests are analyzed in a lab certified by the AABB as well
as the New York State Department of Health, Rosenthal said.
Health
experts advise customers to only use labs accredited by AABB or
distributors who use those labs, but there are no regulations on the
outfits themselves. It is also not illegal to run a DNA testing
laboratory that is not AABB-certified, Baird said.
Customers at
Health Street must have a prescription from a doctor requesting the
tests, Rosenthal said. Paternity testing is usually not covered by
health insurance unless there is a medical need.
HEARTBREAK CASES
Aside
from questions about reliability, experts said wider DNA testing raises
concerns of whether families and individuals are psychologically
prepared for the results.
"The bigger question is what do we do with
this information. Why are we looking for it and what do we think it
means?" Crockin said.
Crockin said individuals, especially children,
should have the advice of trained genetic counselors before and at the
time of receiving the results of the DNA match.
Others say the
promotion and presence of these DNA testing clinics and methods could
devalue past family relationships when new biological connections are
discovered.
"As this (industry) evolves it will create... a social
expectation that, despite a past relationship between a social father
and a child, DNA is everything," said David Bishai, a professor at Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Typical customers at
Health Street include men who are engaged and want to confirm offspring
from a past relationship, returning soldiers seeking reassurance that
they fathered newly-born children, and women inquiring about paternity
on behalf of their children, Rosenthal said.
The door, however, is open to heartbreak, especially when men discover that somebody else fathered their children.
"If you're really happy with the children in your life, don't go near these things," Bishai said.
Others are happy to receive the results.
Cornelia
Heggs, 40, of Carrollton, Georgia, grew up knowing she had
half-siblings from her absent father's other marriages but never met
them. She was contacted in 2009 by a half-sister who promised their
mutual grandmother that she would find Heggs. The two women confirmed
their relationship in June through a test at Health Street.
"We found each other and now we have the proof. There's no more guessing. I'm just happy to know," she said.
For others the information opens an uncertain chapter.
A
44-year-old married father of two in New York City confirmed in July
through a DNA test at Health Street's mobile clinic that the adult
daughter of a woman he dated some 20 years ago was his.
The man, who
declined to give his name for reasons of privacy, said he is slowly and
cautiously building a relationship with his 20-year-old daughter, a
student in Ohio.
"This issue is still raw and very sensitive," he said.
"I will get to know my daughter ... this is something I'm taking one day at a time."
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