The Prevalence of Paternity Deceit - Statistics

The need to know one's own human biological identity is as strong as the need to have your own family.

The government has no right to take a child away from a biological parent unless it is proven that the child is in danger and needs to be protected from the biological parents.

Yet, with conclusive studies that show between 10% and 16% of the general population are victims of paternity deceit, there are no laws to protect men and the most vulnerable people in our society, our newborn babies.

Here are a few of the studies or authorities for these statistics:

American Association of Blood Banks

Sometimes misquoted, the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB) publishes an annual report with DNA paternity testing statistics.  Note that the statistics were concerning men that suspected that they are not the father and therefore sought testing.

Parentage Testing Program Unit - 1999 study by the American Association of Blood Banks that found that in 30 percent of 280,000 blood tests performed to determine paternity, the man tested was not the biological father.. The annual DNA testing results for the AABB haven't varied much over many years

AABB Annual Report Summary Testing in 2001 PDF - view /download

The Globe and Mail, Canada's largest national newspaper, quotes geneticists from The Hospital for Sick Children, affectionetly called "SickKids", one of the top 5 children's hospitals in the world. The article is titled " Mommy's Little Secret"

Infidelity is about 40-50% for at least one instance

Research show that 40% of women and 60% of men in a committed relationship will be unfaithful at some point.

Jeanette Papp of the University of California at Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. feels that 15 per cent is rate of paternity fraud for the Western world, even if there is no hard evidence. "It's hard to do studies on these things for ethical reasons," says Dr. Papp, director of genotyping and sequencing in UCLA's department of human genetics. "I mean, how do you tell people what you're really looking for?"

A British survey conducted between 1988 and 1996 by Robin Baker, a former professor at the University of Manchester, confirmed the 10-per-cent figure. That seems high to skeptics such as Dalhousie University geneticist Paul Neumann, although even he admitted that "my colleague, who's a woman, tells me women have no trouble believing it. . . . It's the men who can't."

We have many other studies from the U.K. and elsewhere going back to 1965.