‘Sir, You Are Not The Biological Father Of Your Son. Your Unborn Twin Brother Is The Father Of Your Son!!’
A 34-year-old man was told in the only known case of a paternity test being tricked by a so-called “Human Chimera,” the Independent reports.
It began when a US couple learned that their son, born healthy in 2014 with the aid of a fertility clinic, had a different blood type than his parents. Concerned, the husband took an at-home paternity test and learned that his DNA didn’t match the son’s. “You can imagine the parents were pretty upset,” Stanford University geneticist Barry Starr said. “They thought the clinic had used the wrong sperm.”
The clinic assured them there was no mixup, so the couple got a lawyer and approached Starr for help. On Starr’s advice, the father and son took DNA ancestry tests and learned that genetically the dad was his son’s uncle.
In other words, the dad was a “human chimera” who had soaked up the genes of his twin that perished in the womb and then passed them on to the son. Starr saw further evidence of chimerism in the father’s skin (which was two-toned in dark and light strips) and a DNA test of his semen, which identified a slight father-son genetic match of 10%.
