A mobile DNA testing facility that looks more like a motor home than a medical clinic is raising questions about the ramifications of quick and easy tests to determine paternity and other biological connections.
Once a time-consuming and complicated process, DNA testing has become so accessible that experts worry families and individuals may not be properly prepared for the results.
An 8.5-metre recreational vehicle (RV) cruising around New York City emblazoned with the question “Who’s Your Daddy?”, and offering on-the-spot DNA testing services starting at €238, has renewed those concerns.
The clinic started in 2010 but was revamped two months ago.
Passers-by can hail the conspicuous brown and blue Winnebago to have DNA samples taken by a technician, packaged and sent to a laboratory in Ohio. Results are returned within three to five business days. Mandatory prescriptions for the tests from a customer’s physician can be faxed via the internet to the RV.
Jared Rosenthal, who founded Health Street and drives the RV, recounts some of the people affected by his service. Two women learned they were half-sisters and a man who suspected that he might be the father of a friend’s daughter was confirmed.
Experts say there has been a steady increase in demand for such tests in the US, reaching close to 500,000 a year, according to Michael Baird, director of DNA Diagnostics, a DNA testing laboratory, in part because the rate of births to unmarried women has also been increasing.
In 2010, at least 382,199 relationship tests were conducted in the US, although the total is likely higher because some labs do not submit data, according to the AABB, formerly known as the American Association of Blood Banks, which accredits relationship testing facilities.
State child-support agencies make up the bulk of this demand, but experts said the number of people simply seeking answers, and the accompanying number of venues and ways to test for family relationships, have increased.
Aside from questions about reliability, experts said wider DNA testing raises concerns of whether families and individuals are psychologically prepared for the results.
“The bigger question is what do we do with this information. Why are we looking for it and what do we think it means?” Dr Crockin said.
Dr Crockin said individuals, especially children, should have the advice of trained genetic counsellors before and at the time of receiving the results of the DNA match.
Typical customers at Health Street include men who are engaged and want to confirm offspring from a past relationship, returning soldiers seeking reassurance that they fathered newly-born children, and women inquiring about paternity on behalf of their children, Mr Rosenthal said.
The door, however, is open to heartbreak, especially when men discover that somebody else fathered their children.
Others are happy to receive the results. Cornelia Heggs, 40, of Carrollton, Georgia, grew up knowing she had half-siblings from her absent father's other marriages but never met them. She was contacted in 2009 by a half-sister who promised their mutual grandmother that she would find Heggs. The two confirmed their relationship in June through a test at Health Street.