ZAP // Lydia Fairchild; crytallight / Depositphotos
A DNA test revealed that Lydia Fairchild was “not the mother” of her children
Lydia was 26 years old when she asked for social support to raise her two children. The DNA test was dramatic: she was not the mother of his children! She was suspected of fraud or kidnapping, and no one believed her. She was pregnant with her third child, a judge ordered a DNA test shortly after birth — and the impossible happened!
DNA is often considered the ultimate indicator of our identity — a surefire way to determine our origins and how we connect with our parents and previous generations of our family.
But in a new one, the author and science journalist Lise Barnéoud explores an unusual case that exposes the limitations of DNA testing: when a maternity test suggested that a woman it wasn’t the mother of the children who had given birth.
Lydia Fairchild She was 26 years old when she asked for social support to raise her two children alone. As part of the application process, she had to undergo a maternity test. A few weeks later, she was summoned to a meeting with social services, where they accused her of not being the mother of her children.
“At first I laughed a little…But they were serious. I could see the seriousness on their faces,” Fairchild said. “DNA is one hundred percent infallible and doesn’t lie,” a social worker told him. “So who are you?”
At first, Fairchild was suspected of trying to defraud the system of social support to invent children. The Public Ministry opened an investigation and quickly confirmed that two children did, in fact, live with her.
I could have kidnapped them? Fairchild showed them photographs of herself pregnant. Your mother, your children’s father and your obstetrician everyone witnessed that she had given birth, says the .
Could be a surrogate mother What would remain with the children he had fathered? After three court hearings, Fairchild feared the peepr. “Every day I felt like it was going to be the last day I saw them”, he said through tears.
“I contacted every lawyer in the phone book. None believed. It was my word against DNA. It was me against everyone else,” recalls Fairchild.
At the time, Fairchild was pregnant with her third childand the judge ordered that both mother and child be tested immediately after birth. And the impossible happened: Fairchild’s third son, fresh from her womb, also was not his son – from a genetic point of view.
Finally, a lawyer agreed to help her. Alan Tindell asked Fairchild about his life, his relationships with his brothers and his relationship with the father of his children. “Based on the answers she gave me, I decided to believe her“, explicou Tindell.
Shortly afterwards, he came across a scientific article who described the famous case of and contacted the Boston team to ask them to examine Fairchild.
The researchers began by analyze Fairchild’s bloodbut found just one type of cell, as had happened with Keegan. They then moved on to skin, hair and oral mucosa cells: still no results.
Until the day they held a cervical cytology. There, they found cells with a different DNA, which corresponded to both the Fairchild children and their mother. They concluded that the second DNA came from a twin whothat had disappeared.
Fairchild could finally breathe a sigh of relief. But how would her story have ended without Karen Keegan?
The equation so often taught of “one individual, one genome” does not account for all complexity of reality. We know too little about our own biology to blindly trust that DNA profile analysis will always reveal a person’s identity or origins.
“The currently dominant assumption in these circumstances is that a sample that does not confirm the genetic relationship constitutes an indication of fraudregardless of other elements proving legitimate kinship ties”, observes the British philosopher Margrit Shildrickone of the rare academics to examine the social and legal consequences do .
Why is certain scientific knowledge so hastily presented as infallible truth? Do we not dwell enough on our own ignorance?
And why do some areas of knowledge remain paralyzed by skepticism, even when new discoveries should allow us to dispel our doubts? The sociology of science has a long way to go.
We currently know about a dozen cases of this phenomenonthe so-called germline chimerismin which chimeric cells are present in the tissues that form eggs or sperm.
One such case involved an American man who learned, through a paternity test, that he had notCouldn’t be the father of your childconceived through medically assisted reproduction.
I was preparing to sue the clinicconvinced that he was the victim of a semen exchange, when a more precise test revealed that, in reality, shared 25% of their DNA with the child. In other words, he was the child’s uncle, from a genetic point of view.
Further investigation revealed that 10% of their sperm contained DNA from a missing twin brother.
“One of the most significant consequences of this case is to draw attention to the fact that some traditional paternity tests that have resulted in negative conclusions may have been wrong, because the alleged father may have a undiagnosed chimerism“, emphasize the investigators who documented the case.
Given the increasing use of these tests, it is likely that other men’s paternity has been incorrectly questioned. This is precisely the scenario portrayed in the French television series ““, broadcast in 2021.
Nona, played by the actress Meow-Meowwho was then 70 years old, is pregnant when a genetic test reveals that her lover, André, cannot be the father of your child.
They end up discovering that one of André’s testicles contains sperm from a missing twin brother. In André’s words, when trying to decipher his situation: “So he’s my nephew… but he’s also my son“.
