QUESTION OF PATERNITY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21932, 16 October 1934, Page 12

QUESTION OF PATERNITY

REQUEST FOR BLOOD TEST FIRST CASE IN DOMINION [bv telegraph—OWN correspondent] DUNEDIN, Monday For the first time in New Zealand it is intended in an affiliation case at present before the Court in Dunedin to enlist a blood test with the idea of proving that the man against whom the order is sought is not the father of the child. The blood test has been used for some timo on the Continent, and a case occurred recently in Australia. The case is one that was heard in the Police Court to-day. Counsel for defendant asked for an adjournment of six months to enable a blood group test to be made. He said that six months was the shortest period in which a group could be properly settled. The adjournment was granted. The operation and application of a blood test were explained to-day by Dr. E. F. DAth, pathologist at the Dunedin Hospital. The whole of the human race, he said, was divided into four groups as far as blood was concerned, and these groups were inherited under what were known as the Mendelian laws of inheritance. "If we know the blood group of the father and the blood group of the mother," he said, "we can tell within what limits the blood group of the child must be." While stating that this method was extremely exact, Dr. DAtn admitted that its use in Court cases must be somewhat limited, since there might be several persons concerned all in one blood group. Its value, therefore, was more of a negative than a positive nature, since there might be a child which could not possibly be the offspring of a certain man. During the past few years, this method of denying paternity had been widely used in Germany and elsewhere on the Continent in affiliation cases. Ho added that it was necessary to wait until a child was six months old in order to determine the blood group into which it fell, since before that time the group was not fixed.