Yu, N., Kruskall, M. S., Yunis, J. J., Knoll, J. H.M., Uhl, L., Alosco, S., Ohashi, M., Clavijo, O., Husain, Z., Yunis, E. J., Yunis, J. J., Yunis, E. J. (2002). Disputed Maternity Leading to Identification of Tetragametic Chimerism. N Engl J Med 346: 1545-1552
Here is a news story about it.
There is a show on Discovery Health about chimerism that is showing again on April 14 at 7 pm Eastern. It’s called “I Am My Own Twin.”
AUGUST. I meant August. Sorry.
Plus, I saw it in an episode of “C. S. I.”. So it must be true.
I saw the airing of “I Am My Own Twin” on Discovery Health channel a couple of months ago and it blew. me. away. :eek:
Hey, they fought some ignorance! Prior to that, I’d heard the term “chimera” but didn’t know what it meant. Now I do.
It sounded really good when I saw the ad. The August 14 airing is the last one for awhile. Catch it if you can, everyone!
Granted, but I’m still waiting for reasons that proof of false paternity should be withheld from the cuckold.
There is always the study by Phillips that was done in Liverpool in the late '60s and published in 1973. Using blood groups, he showed that AT LEAST 10% of the legal paternities were impossible. Taking into account situations where both the real father and the legal father had the same blood type, the estimate was more like 13-17%.
I’d say 1 in 25 is a gross underestimate, and echoes findings of studies done amongst the Amish. You’re talking more like 1 in 7 for your average western family.
Yes, but were they aware of it? The study being discussed seems to be talking only about cases in which the dad is ignorant of the situation. Is that true of the study you’re talking about?
Why should they be told? It isn’t the responsibility of the medical profession to police your bedroom. If, during a medical examination, a doctor discovers that a child could not have been fathered by the woman’s husband, what difference does it make? The doctor will treat the patient based on their genetic tendencies and weaknesses, not on their birth certificate. There is no reason for the husband to ever be informed by the doctor, unless they press as to “why can’t your use my kidney for a transplant” or something like that.
I also suspect that in some instances the father IS aware of the child not being a biological descendant of his, but for various reasons the parents conceal this fact. There could be several reasons for this - perhaps he himself is sterile and this was their solution to building a family (that solution goes back millenia, even if it wasn’t common) but the parents wish to avoid social problems and thus keep the secrect. Or perhaps the parents met when the woman was already pregnant. Or perhaps there was a rape involved but the mother decided not to abort. I could probably come up with a few others, but really, just because the legal father and the child aren’t biologically related doesn’t mean the man is ignorant of the fact, although I’m sure that is the case much of the time.
As an aside, Tyler Hamilton, the Americn cyclist who has been suspended for two years fro blood doping, claims that he tested positive because he is a chimera.
I saw that show on Discovery and it was absolutely amazing.
I’m about 99% sure one of my older sisters isn’t my Dads. The family legend has it that Mom and Dad dated, broke up, Mom realized she was pregnant, Dad came back to be the stand-up guy and marry her when he found out. Sis was a few months old when the marrying took place and had to be legally adopted by Dad because ‘back then you weren’t allowed to name the father on the birth cert if you weren’t married’ see? Dad was very adamant about legally being the Dad because he already had one baby from another mama and was having custody issues already. It was the sixties, they had a few twists and turns on the road to eternal married bliss, but it’s all good.
Except…daughters 1 (from the other mama) 3 and 4 share similar characteristics, physically and personality wise. Daughter 2 is quite noticeably different.
Daughter 2’s namesake, a favored aunt who was definitely around and in the know back then, once counseled me that marrying the father of my child wasn’t necessary, since after all, didn’t Dad love daughter 2 just as well as the rest of us and Mom met him when she was already pregnant. When I questioned Mom based on what the aunt had said, Mom stuck with the breakup, pregnant, reconciliation and marriage story.
You know how Mom and Dad’s friends can become honorary uncles and aunts? We had one such honorary uncle who was an ex-boyfriend of Moms, we even visited his mother often and grew up calling her grandma. Kind of generous for my Dad (hardcore macho former military type) to be so very okay with his woman’s ex being around all the time, eh? Kinda weird how said uncle shared quite a few physical characteristics with Daughter 2, eh?
Yeah, my theory is Daughter 2 was the ex-boyfriend’s kid. Mom was pregnant when she met Dad and Dad just decided it didn’t matter and wanted to raise Daughter 2 as his own (perhaps his guilt at not being around Daughter 1 at that point had something to do with it.) Hence the legal adoption bit, and the allowing the ex to be around and they cooked up the alternate story 40 years ago and see no reason to deviate from it now.
My dad is a retired mailman. Maybe that’s why he had such nice christmas bonuses from certain households?
Just kidding Dad.
(Makes mental note to tell daughter not to date men from a certain part of Brooklyn . . . )
Another reason for disclosure, I suppose. Though not an overly compelling one. I imagine that adopted kids with little to no knowledge of their biological parents have a higher chance of unknowingly ending up in a physical relationship with a relation.
But negative consequences from situations like the plot twist in the film Lone Star…unknown half siblings end up mysteriously attracted to eachother, resulting in a sexual encounter could be avoided.
A friend of mine used to always joke around with his family that his dad was probably the mailman. Of course, his dad and husband to his mom at the time of his birth -was- the local mailman, so… 
See Diamond’s book, The Third Chimpanzee, for a reference to early blood-type research in, I believe, the 1940s that inadvertently uncovered this awkward facet of human behavior. At the time, not all blood types had been identified, so the initial findings were pretty modest. Including the later discovery of Rhesus factors could have bumped the impossible paternities to over 20 percent in Diamond’s estimation. That aspect of the research findings was buried by the researcher due to the social climate of the time.
Not that this is any surprise; jokes, folk tales, and even prejudices are sometimes founded on a kernel of truth. The delivery-man jokes are just a bit more uncomfortable than they used to be.
It’s pretty obvious that that it didn’t happen in my family, though. We all resemble too many people on both sides of the ol’ family tree to be unrelated. Despite my younger sister’s blonde hair (all the rest of us are dark) she looks almost exactly like pictures taken of my paternal grandmother in her youth. Weird recessives, you get a lot of those with mutts like us.
available light and I could have kids with blond hair and blue eyes, despite both of us having brown hair and brown eyes (well, hers are a bit greenish). See, we each have a darker and a lighter complexioned parent.
Yes, this is basically what happened to me. I didn’t find out until 9th grade that “Dad” was really my stepfather. Apparently, my biological father ran away when he found out that my mom was pregnant. Didn’t change much around here, I still call my (legal) stepfather “Dad.”
Except when my brother and sister found out later (which was earlier in life than I did, you know. Since it of course affects them as much as me. I just resent that.), the brother uses it as fodder for arguments. “At least I’m only HALF-related to you!” Which of course makes no sense.
“My Dear, I’ve just been to the pub, and I’ve heard about the antics of the postman. Then I heard him boast how he had bedded every woman on our block except for one, I rushed home to tell you how relieved I am…”
“It’s probably that bitch Gwen from down the street”