GettyIt’s the kind of paternity test result which would baffle even Jeremy Kyle – a man in the U.S. was stunned to find out he wasn’t the biological father to his son, because his unborn twin was.
Confused yet? We are.
After excessive genetic testing, doctors found that the 34-year-old Washington man had passed on his own DNA to his twin in the womb, which meant biologically the baby’s father was technically the man’s unborn brother.
The first-of-its-kind case has been written about in a study by geneticist Barry Starr at Stanford University.
iStockBasically, the man (who has chosen to remain anonymous) was a ‘chimera’, a person who carries two sets of DNA – one set was his own, the other his unborn twin brother’s.
According to Buzzfeed, the couple were having trouble conceiving so used a fertility clinic, which helped them to give birth to a son in June 2014. However, they were confused to learn that the little boy had a different blood type from his parents – the baby’s blood type was AB but both the mother and father were blood type A.
The revelation led the father to take a paternity test, which he failed. Naturally, the couple’s initial thoughts were that the clinic had used the wrong sperm in the procedure, which they weren’t too pleased about!
However, after confirmation that it was his sperm which was used, the poor guy still failed a second paternity test. So, the couple approached Dr Barry (pictured above), who suggested they perform a genetic ancestry test.
That test shockingly revealed that the man was actually the boy’s uncle, which is when the doctor realised what was going on.
Speaking to Buzzfeed, Dr Barry said:
That was kind of a eureka moment. Chimera reports are very rare but they are real. So the father is the fusion of two people, both the child’s father and uncle. That’s wicked cool!
The diagnosis meant the DNA of the man’s saliva differed from the DNA found in his sperm, allowing him to technically father his own nephew. Sometimes the truth really is stranger than (science) fiction!
