Out of every 100 people, 10 weren't fathered by the man they believe is dad

Excerpt from 50 things your not supposed to know.

Geneticists, disease researchers, and evolutionary psychologists have known it for a while, but the statistics haven't gotten much air outside of the ivory tower. Consistently they find that one in ten of us wasn't fathered by the man we think is our biological dad.

Naturally, adoptees and stepchildren realize their paternal situation. What we're talking about here is people who have taken it as a given, for their entire lives, that dear old dad is the one who contributed his sperm to the process. Even dad himself may be under this impression. And Mom, knowing its not a sure thing, just keeps quiet.

Genetic testing companies report that almost one-third of the time, samples sent to them show that the man is not the father of the child. But these companies are used when there's a court order in a paternity suit or when a man gets suspicious because his kid looks a lot like his best friend or his wifes co-worker. So we shouldn't be surprised that the non-paternity rate for these tests hovers around 30%.

The shocker comes when we look at the numbers for accidental discoveries, those that occur when paternity isn't thought to be an issue. Sometimes this happens on an individual basis, other times, due to large-scale studies of blood types, disease susceptibility, kinship, and other fields of medical and scientific investigation.

Dr. Caoilfhionn Gallagher of the University College of Dublin gives an example of the former:

"The paradigmatic situation is that three people come to a hospital together, a husband, a wife and their child who they fear has cystic fibrosis. If the child had the incurable disease she must have received two copies of the CF gene, one from each parent. Tests at the hospital confirm the families worst fears - she has the disease - but also reveals something unexpected. The child's mother carries one of the culprit genes, but the fathers DNA shows no such sign, which means he's not the carrier and therefore cannot possibly be her biological father."

The latter type of discovery occurred in classic case from the early '70's. Scientists were eyeballing blood types in the British town of West Isleworth, taking the red stuff from entire families. They realized, to their dismay, that fully 30% of the children had blood types which proved they couldn't possibly be biologically related to their "Fathers". The true rate of illegitimacy was still higher, though, because even some fathers and bastards would have matching blood types due to coincidence. The researchers estimated the true rate at around 50%.

Other studies have found a 20-30% rate in Liverpool, 10% in rural Michigan, and 2.3% among native Hawaiians. The overall figure of 10% is actually an average estimate based on many studies taking place in sundry regions over the course of decades. In his book "Sperm Wars: The science of sex", Biologist Robin Baker, PhD, summarizes the stats:

"Actual Figures range from 1% in high-status areas of the US and Switzerland, to 5%-6% for moderate-status males in the US and great Britain, and 10-30% for lower status males in the US, GB, and France."

The prestigious Medical Journal, the Lancet concurs: "The true frequency of non-paternity is not known, but published reports suggest incidence from as low as 1% per generation up to about 30%."

The research shows that the lower a purported fathers socioeconomic status, the more likely his wife got someone else to father the child. From a Darwinian stand-point, this makes perfect sense, since she wants her offspring to have the highest-caliber DNA, which may not come from the stiff she settled for at the alter.

I knew something wasn't right in my family when my dad said to me "hau, chang san yao ting sa mang!"



[edit on 2-12-2008 by king9072]

Can you link your source, please?

By the way, you can't post so much of an article in one quote, it's against the rules,

Brutal people are horny sloots hence why I'll never marry( at least for now), because the temptations for both are to great at times.

I wonder why people are shiesty sneaky lil creatures to go behinds someones back and spread thier legs or dip their stick.

Lol it's embarassing the social conditioning of today, liberal openminded free wheelin monkies.

Monkies fakkin Monkies Fakkin monkies.

Originally posted by DJMessiah
Can you link your source, please?

By the way, you can't post so much of an article in one quote, it's against the rules,

Hey, I noted the source, its a book and thats why I wrote the entire article out - cause its from a book - and not online.

Buut, the bibliography notes the following: American association of blood banks. "annual report summary for testing in 1999". American association of blood banks "ARST in 2001". Oct 2002 Baker, Robin Ph.D. Sperm Wars: the science of sex. Harpercollins, 1996. Child support analysis website. "Misattributed paternity". 5 july 2004. www.childsupportanalysis.co.uk. Gallagher, Caoilfhionn. "in the name of the Father? Legal and ethical Dilemmas surrounding 'accidental' findings of paternity." Annual Conference 2003, Socio-legal studies assosciation at nottingham Law school. [www.nls.ntu.ac.uk/slsa2003/] Lucassen, Anneke and Michael Parker. " Revealing false paternity: Some ethical considerations" Lancet 357 (2001): 1033-5. Phillip E. "Discussion: Moral, social and ethical issues" Law and ethics of A.I.D. and embrio transfer. Ciba Foundation symposium (vol. 17), G.E.W. Wostenholme and D.W. Fitzsimmons (eds.). Amsterdam: Elsevier, Excerpta Medica, North Holland, 1973:64-66.


And I posted the article simply as a "hmmmm" for ATS goers, its just a 'fun fact' no need for anger.

[edit on 3-12-2008 by king9072]

Nice topic. I've flagged the thread.

Not too clear what the conspiracy is, though. Is it a conspiracy to deny the fact that about a quarter of us are bastards without knowing it?

Or is it a conspiracy to hide the near-universal prevalance of adultery and fornication? I think we already knew about that.

Anyway, well done, OP, for bringing the truth to light. And yes, it is true - genetic evidence of this kind is pretty well impossible to deny.

Now as to this...

I wonder why people are shiesty sneaky lil creatures to go behinds someones back and spread thier legs or dip their stick.

Wonder not. It is how we have evolved to be. In most higher animal species, mating rights are assigned according to an individual's place in the group hierarchy (for social species) or local population hierarchy (for the rest). Top Male gets all the girls he wants. Number Two gets the ones Number One didn't want... Number Three and the rest usually end up with nothing.

Officially, that is.

Unofficially, the lower orders sometimes help themselves to sloppy seconds when the boss isn't looking - so long as they can get the girls to agree, of course. It has to be done quickly and discreetly. That's why birds - which tend to be monogamous, at least inside a given breeding season - have sex with their bonded partners out in the open, but hide deep inside bushes and other cover when having it off with another partner on the sly. Yes, this has been observed in the wild by zoologists. So, you see,

the social conditioning of today

really has nothing to do with it. Neither has liberalism.

Monkies fakkin Monkies Fakkin monkies.

Not monkeys. Apes. Apes like me. Apes like you. Acting naturally.

And by the way, the 'hypocrisy' is natural too. Not nice, but natural.