On The Mark -- A Father's Day Gift Idea -- Two Tubes and a Little DNA

We all know how difficult it is to buy a Father’s Day gift for the person who has everything. Finding something different and unique is nearly impossible, unless you want to spend thousands of dollars.

In Germany, one company has come up with a unique gift, and you can get it for pennies. Biotix, a laboratory that specializes in DNA testing, is offering to conduct paternity tests (normally $625) for any father in Germany if he suspects his wife was messing around and he wants to know if the child is really his. The father takes a swab of saliva from his mouth and swab from his kid, puts them in separate tubes, and mails them off to the lab. Within days, the lab sends back the results with 99.9% accuracy. According to the Chicago Tribune, last year 15,000-20,000 paternity tests were conducted in Germany and 1 in 5 came back indicating that someone else had fathered the child.

What a Father’s Day present that would be, huh? Those are pretty amazing statistics.

What is a publicity stunt has now turned into a public fight in Germany with proposed legislation that fathers cannot have these tests done in secrecy – that the mother/wife must provide consent. I think this proposed legislation is hogwash, but at the same time it would probably save the guy a lot of money. Imagine the scenario if the law is passed. The legislators believe that secret paternity tests would tear apart the family. So when the husband says, “Honey, I want to get a DNA test done on little Isabel,” how can anything good come from it.

That phrase alone would tear apart the family, whether the wife is innocent or not. If she says “OK” then he’ll probably not feel a need to spend the money, but his wife will then probably start looking because she’ll be pissed. If she puts up a fight, even if she’s innocent, she’ll look guilty. Whereas, if the father has the test done in secret, and it comes back OK, then nobody knows and nobody gets hurt. Right?