Paternity suit runs into double trouble

It is a paternity suit that not even DNA testing can solve. A five-year-old boy may never know his father's identity because his mother claims she had sex with identical twins at the time he was conceived.

Lawyers admit that the most advanced genetic testing techniques are unlikely to prove which of the twin brothers - in their late twenties - fathered the child. The unprecedented case in Montreal, Canada, is a real-life rerun of a plot twist in Zadie Smith's 2000 novel White Teeth, in which the character Irie Jones has sex with the Iqbal twins on the same day and becomes pregnant.

Whereas siblings usually have enough genetic differences to be told apart, identical twins' DNA is almost exactly the same. Justice Paul Jolin, of the Quebec Superior Court, said of the case: 'There's a high risk that it is impossible to determine who the father is.'

One of the twins, who cannot be named for legal reasons, went to court last summer in the hope of forcing the mother to grant him access to the child. Although his name is not on the birth certificate, he claims he is the only father the boy has known, cared for him every other weekend, provided financial support and was even known to him as 'papa'.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1361255,00.html

:)

Identical twins have the same DNA....what a case. :)

I'm just saying.

In a case like this, when one of the twins obviously wants to claim the child, why not just let him? They can't prove he isn't, and he is willing to do so. No, not the clean verdict the courts would like, but hey, sometimes ya just gotta do your best, eh?

On an interesting side note, if you ever argue with fundies about abortion and they use the argument that each child is a unique individual, bring up identical twins and watch their heads explode.