Results not admissable in court...but useful nevertheless.
Home paternity tests: Find the father, fast
With results available in five days, Utah-based Identigene's kits are latest example of how genetics testing is pushing into the consumer marketplace
By Tom Harvey
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 03/25/2008
Natalie Maynes and her boyfriend were tired of waiting for the state of Washington to order a paternity test to prove that he was the father of her baby boy.
When they heard that an over-the-counter test was available from Utah-based Identigene, they bought one. Five days later they had the result. Her boyfriend, not another man, was the father.
The kits are the latest example of how genetics testing is pushing into the consumer marketplace, fueling competition not only in paternity issues but also in ancestry research. Experts are warning consumers, though, that some laboratories doing the testing are not required to meet federal or any genetic testing standards.
Maynes' story is among the successes that Identigene found in a three-state marketing test at Rite Aid stores, prompting it to make the kit available starting today in Utah, 30 other states and the District of Columbia.
"It made the child support, figuring out who the father was, just a whole lot easier - not having to deal with the other person because he was just really difficult to work with, and the state just took forever," Maynes said Monday.
Genetic paternity tests are widely available online, but Identigene officials see various reasons why someone might want to buy one at a store, including ease of purchase and privacy.
Although people purchase the kits for various reasons, "really it's all about peace of mind," said Douglas Fogg, chief operating officer of Sorenson Genomics, parent company of Identigene, which is marketing the over-the-counter kits.
"This is a very inexpensive first step" to establishing paternity, he said.
The suggested retail price for the kits is $29.99. They contain cotton swabs for taking cells from inside the mouth, which are then placed in sealed plastic bags and sent with a consent form and an additional fee of $119 to a Sorenson lab. Results are available in three to five days and can be accessed online.
The kits were test-marketed in Rite Aid stores in Washington, Oregon and California starting in November. Rite Aid initially bought 10,000 kits for the test and has ordered 10,000 more for all of its stores except those in New York, where state law requires a court order or medical prescription, said Fogg.
Identigene's informal survey found that about 60 percent of purchasers were women and that most people who bought the kits were in their 20s. Fogg says he believes that about 30 percent of the sales were to people who bought the kits for someone else who had a paternity issue.
"There are myriad reasons why people want to establish paternity," he said, adding that many purchasers were adults who still had questions about who their parents were.
Cory Wall, an attorney at the Salt Lake City law firm of Wall & Wall that focuses largely on family law, said the kits would be most helpful to men.
"If there's some question about whether he feels he may or may not be the father of [a] child, it would certainly help clear that up," Wall said. "It might also help clear some issues he may have with the mother in terms of being able to set up some visitation, and being able to move on and set up a more formalized custody and parent time."
The tests, however, cannot be used in legal proceedings because there is no verification that the samples come from the people who are listed on the forms sent to the laboratory. Legally valid tests cost about $350 with Identigene.
Sorenson companies and others in the United States also offer tests to track ancestry and to track whether purchasers might be vulnerable to genetic diseases.
Gail Javitt, law and policy director at the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University, pointed out that laboratories that do paternity DNA testing do not have to meet federal guidelines aimed at ensuring accuracy.
With some paternity tests advertised on the Web for as little as $89, Identigene's Fogg said one difference with his company is that its laboratory is accredited for crime scene processing and by the American Association of Blood Banks, which set standards for handling and processing samples.
Assuming that the information listed on the form sent in with paternity kits is correct, the test is 99.9 percent accurate for paternity, he said.
About the kits
Purpose: To establish who is the father of a person.
Availability: Rite Aid and Meijer stores in 31 states and the District of Columbia.
Cost: Suggested retail price is $29.99 for the kit plus a lab fee of $119.
How they work: Kits contain cotton swabs for taking cells from the inside of the mouth, which are then placed in sealed bags and sent along with a consent form.
How long it takes: Results are available in three to five days and can be accessed online.
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