According to CBC, a DNA lab in Toronto was exposed to inaccurate experimental data, triggering a bloody family ethics drama around the world.
In 2013, Viaguard Accu-Metric Laboratories established its prenatal paternity testing division in Toronto, selling its prenatal testing online through outlets such as Prenatal Paternities Inc. and Paternity Depot. However, its test results were inaccurate, and the company's owner, Harvey Tenenbaum, knew this and remained open.
Women who regret giving birth to their children
In 2019, 19-year-old Mayer became pregnant unexpectedly and did not know who the father of the child was. So she found Viaguard by searching the Internet for the keyword "prenatal paternity test nearby".
The lab offered an option to ask $800 each in two separate installments to send a blood sample of oneself and a biological sample of the man.
She first obtained a swab of the cheek parotid gland from Male No. 1, whom she believed was the father of the child, and sent the sealed sample in a box. The results show a mismatch.
So, she took another sample of male No. 2, and the results showed a match.
However, the postpartum paternity test after the birth of the daughter showed that the child was male number 1 - the test result was completely wrong.
Mayer almost broke down when she saw the results, and the misleading data of the experiment led her to involve a man who didn't want anything to do with her or her children.
Men who "like to be dads".
In another case, in 2017, Brennan, a man from Atlanta, was overjoyed after being told that his paternity test was "positive" and his family supported him, buying a car and a house in Atlanta, and Brennan's mother held a "grandmother's baptism" ceremony to celebrate.
After the birth of the child, he spent $20,000 to fight a lawsuit with the child's mother for custody. The child's mother tried to win the lawsuit and found out that Brennan was not the father at all - after 8 months of careful care of the child, Brennan found that the child was not her own at all.
But he still believed that he was the father, and only added a few strokes to the place where the name Travis tattooed "son" on his arm changed it to Travesty, which means "mockery".
Test results by "guessing"
Viaguard claims to use a common prenatal paternity test that has been commercially available since 2014. Experts say that if done correctly, the results will be very accurate.
It is a non-invasive prenatal paternity test that matches thousands of genetic data points in fetal DNA called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with fetal DNA flowing in the mother's bloodstream and thousands of SNPs in the father's DNA.
However, a former employee claimed in an interview with CBC News that Viaguard appears to rely more on guesswork than science when dealing with some prenatal paternity tests.
Sika Richot answered the phone for Viaguard for 3 months in 2019. She is responsible for asking women seeking prenatal paternity test kits about the timing of their menstrual cycles and the dates they have sex with different men, although this information is not useful for DNA testing.
Staff would enter these dates into the online ovulation calendar to narrow down the range of possible biological fathers, and Richot would then enter the information into a form for his boss, Tenenbaum, to sign for confirmation.
She believes that anyone who has had a DNA test at the lab, for whatever purpose, should consider doing it again.
In addition, the latest report found that its "quality manager" Kyle Tsui was suspected of mail and wire fraud after digging deep into the company's negligent and corrupt internal employees. He was supposed to test the hair samples sent by the customer one by one, but he "only took money and did nothing".
At a plea hearing in the United States, Tsui pleaded guilty to instructing employees to discard hair samples and providing false test results to clients. U.S. authorities say Tsui earned about $5.9 million in sales over a period of eight months by defrauding at least 88,000 people.
"Not something that can be done at home"
Dr Mohammad Akbar, director of research at the Molecular Genetics Laboratory at Toronto and Women's Hospital, said the type of test Viaguard claims to use depends largely on whether there is enough maternal blood to extract the fetus's DNA.
Akbar said squeezing a few drops of blood from his finger into the vial was not enough. A proper test should take at least 10 milliliters of blood from the mother's vein, he said.
In some cases, Viaguard does use blood drawn from a vein. Some customers who used Viaguard in 2015 told CBC News that what looked like nurses came to their home and had their blood drawn. In other cases, including in a lawsuit in California that led to a settlement, customers took Viaguard's test kits to a local lab to have their blood drawn. These tests also incorrectly identified a biological father.
Loopholes in regulation
Ma'n Zawati, research director and associate professor at the Centre for Genome and Policy at McGill University in Montreal, said private commercial DNA labs do not require a license to operate and sell services.
He said entities like Viaguard could bypass Canada's intricate regulatory regime and operate in the gap between professional bodies, consumer protection agencies, government entities, and federal and provincial departments. Health Canada, for example, has said it does not regulate commercial DNA labs like Viaguard.
Since the establishment of the laboratory in 2013, the Standards Council of Canada (SCC) has received 9 complaints against Viaguard in 4 years, including 2 complaints "on behalf of multiple customers".