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submitted 3 days ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/failed-paternity-test-vanished-twin

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5845036/

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[-] bedwyr@piefed.ca 66 points 3 days ago

There was a woman who went to prison for this, her chimera baby's dna contradicted her story, I think to get public assistance of some kind, and the dna test convinced the state assholes she was lying and they sent her to prison, I think some researchers exonerated her eventually.

[-] Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 55 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Are you thinking of Lydia Fairchild? In her case she wasn't sent to prison. However, her two children were taken from her and placed in foster care. Lawyers had refused to represent her at first, due to the belief that DNA evidence is too strong to fight. On the plus side, she became pregnant again. So a court officer was present during her third child's birth.

Despite being at the birth and witnessing blood draws from both mother and child, the court still claimed she was being untruthful somehow. Thankfully, that birth and its evidence were peculiar enough to attract a lawyer to finally represent her. Only after that did the investigation into potential chimerism arise.

More info here - https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/case-lydia-fairchild-and-her-chimerism-2002

[-] bedwyr@piefed.ca 1 points 3 days ago

Might be I just heard it on a podcast, Poor Historians, Misadventures in Medical History, and I may have gotten the story wrong.

[-] minorkeys@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 days ago

Why are they assholes? Because they didn't know about chimeras?

[-] WiredBrain@lemmy.ca 65 points 3 days ago

Because they don't know the limits of their tools and were convinced they're infallible, and as a result an innocent woman was punished by the state. Just a guess.

[-] minorkeys@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Nobody knows the limit of their tools until those limits are known. Where did you decide they thought they were infallible? They followed the law they have, as is their job. Justice is not perfect, we don't have all the answers, jumping to such vicious conclusions speaks more about you than them. The entire incident, and her successful appeal after further investigation, was like a year. Nobody threw the woman into prison for a decade or something. Seriously, people are so reactionary.

[-] sukhmel@programming.dev 4 points 3 days ago

Nobody knows the limit

I'm not sure, but let's say that's true. They usually also don't care to know the limits. Another interesting case is Patricia Stallings (emphasis mine):

an American woman who was wrongfully convicted of murder after the death of her son Ryan on September 7, 1989. Because testing seemed to indicate an elevated level of ethylene glycol in Ryan's blood, authorities suspected antifreeze poisoning, and arrested Stallings the next day. She was convicted of murder in early 1991, and sentenced to life in prison.

Stallings gave birth to another child while incarcerated awaiting trial; this next child was diagnosed with methylmalonic acidemia (MMA), a rare genetic disorder that can mimic antifreeze poisoning. Prosecutors initially did not believe that the sibling's diagnosis had anything to do with Ryan's case. Stallings' lawyer was forbidden from producing available evidence as proof of the possibility. After a professor in biochemistry and molecular biology had some of Ryan's blood samples tested, he was able to prove that the child had also died from MMA, and not from ethylene glycol poisoning.

[-] ReasonablePea@sh.itjust.works 17 points 3 days ago

I mean unless they proved she was not providing for the kid I think they're assholes. But I shouldn't assume

[-] minorkeys@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 days ago

If the state has good reason to believe someone had abducted children, I would want them to intervene, would you not?

[-] LwL@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

If no one is missing those children, that's not good reason to believe she kidnapped them at all. I want the children to be happy, and regardless of genetics taking them from the parents that raised them into a foster home will just damage them (unless parents are just very abusive)