Lethal genetic testing
Two news about genetic testing: bad (although solvable) and very, very bad (it seems to be the first in world practice, but, sadly, it is likely that it will not be the last).
American geneticists were alarmed by accidentally detected incest
Copper newsAmerican scientists have raised the question of the ethical and legal side of the accidental detection of incest in genetic analyses, which are widespread.
A report dedicated to this has been published in the authoritative British scientific journal The Lancet.
According to researchers from the Texas Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), whose website contains the abstracts of the Microarray analysis can identify unsuspected incest report, employees of laboratories that detect congenital diseases by genetic diagnosis may accidentally discover that the child was conceived as a result of illegal sexual intercourse between the closest relatives. In this regard, it is necessary to decide how doctors should act in such cases.
In most American states, doctors are required to report cases of child abuse to law enforcement agencies, in particular, when pregnancy occurs as a result of such violence. It is less clear what to do if an adult woman becomes pregnant as a result of incest, especially if we take into account the possible social consequences of publicizing this fact.
With almost any type of DNA analysis for hereditary diseases, even if the diagnostician does not have such a goal, it will be seen that the child was conceived by close relatives – this will manifest itself in large sections of identical genes received from the father and mother. (If the parents are closely related, such sites can make up up to a quarter of the child's genome). Since incest is associated with an increased risk of genetic diseases, the probability of its detection in their diagnosis is very high.
In this regard, the head of the Department of Molecular Genetics and Human Genetics of BCM and senior author of the report Arthur Beaudet and colleagues proposed to create a special committee that will consider the ethical and legal aspects of the issue, after which it will develop a practical guide for specialists. According to the authors of the report, the creation of such a manual can also be entrusted to the ethics committees at the American College of Medical Genetics, as well as the American and European Societies of Human Genetics.
And in cases like the one described below, no guides for specialists will help...
Volzhanin killed his wife and daughter after a paternity test
And then he hanged himself.
Ekaterina Belokopytova, "Everything for You", 11.02.2011
The terrible tragedy that occurred a few days ago in Volzhsky became known only today. An ordinary programmer who worked in a small company of Volzhsky, in his own apartment on Mashinostroiteley Street, killed his 39-year-old wife, breaking her head, and strangled his seven-year-old daughter. Having committed these atrocities, the man hanged himself on a computer cord.
What could have caused such a terrible act is not yet known for sure, but the investigation has already had a version of what happened.
– Apparently, the man suspected that he was not the biological father of the child, told the correspondent of the ID "Everything for You" in the investigative department of the city of Volzhsky. – Just before these events, he received the result of a DNA examination, which confirmed the fears of his spouse. This broke his psyche.
The alarm was raised by the couple's parents when they stopped answering the phone. This morning, the mother of the deceased woman found the bodies, which, apparently, had been lying in the apartment for several days. The woman explained that when she opened the front door with her key, she found her son-in-law's corpse in the bathroom. The bodies of the daughter and granddaughter were in large bags.
A pre-investigation check is being carried out.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru14.02.2011