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Misattributed paternity is the situation when a child’s putative father is not the child's biological father. Overall, the incidence of misattributed paternity ranges from about 1% to 2%, though it may be considerably higher in certain populations. Genetic testing for purposes other than establishing paternity has the potential to unintentionally yield information regarding a child’s paternity. This generally occurs in two different scenarios: the first occurs in searches for a suitable bone marrow or organ donor where the patient’s family members are tested; the second is in the course of a genetic-risk assessment for reproductive purposes. Misattributed paternity is also referred to as false paternity, illegitimacy, non-paternity or paternity fraud, though the latter term suggests that the misattribution was deliberate rather than accidental. ==Incidence== The table shows measurements of unsuspected non-paternity rates published since 1957. Early paternity tests were based on informative blood protein variants (blood markers), and since the 1990s, DNA testing has become the standard method. Y chromosome/surname comparisons provide historical non-paternity rates averaged across the entire surname period (''circa'' AD 1300 to the present, for most English family names). The rate of non-paternity is commonly quoted to be much higher, around 10% or even more. Sociologist Michael Gilding has concluded that such high estimates circulated by the media, the paternity testing industry, fathers' rights activists and evolutionary psychologists are inflated. He traces many of these estimates back to a 1972 conference discussion:〔Philipp EE (1973) "Discussion: moral, social and ethical issues". In: Wolstenholme GEW, Fitzsimons DW, eds. ''Law and ethics of AID and embryo transfer''. Ciba Foundation symposium. Vol 17. London: Associated Scientific 63–66〕 :“We blood-tested some patients in a town in south-east England,” Dr Elliot Philipp told the symposium, “and found that 30 per cent of the husbands could not have been the fathers of their children...” At this point Dr Philipp was interrupted by a judge, who observed that “surely the figure of 30 per cent must be a minimum?” The judge clearly understood that while blood tests could definitively exclude paternity, they could not definitively establish it. This is why experts in paternity testing generally speak of an “exclusion rate” rather than a “non-paternity rate” or “misattributed paternity rate.” Dr Philipp agreed that the figure was “a minimum.” He then explained how he came to be doing the tests. His team was “screening some female patients by testing their husbands for their blood groups” as part of a study about the formation of antibodies. The results surprisingly showed that “30 per cent of the children could not have been fathered by the men whose blood group we analysed.” Another participant asked about the number of people who were tested. Dr Philipp replied, “Not large – between 200 and 300 women – but large enough to give us a real shock.” Gilding concluded that Dr Philipp's high figure of 30% was more in keeping with the inevitably high incidence of non-paternity in cases where disputed parentage was the ''reason'' for the paternity testing. In such cases, other sources have consistently recorded an incidence of 17% to 33% (median of 26.9%), especially among offspring born to younger parents and to unmarried couples, and among those of lower socio-economic status or from certain cultural groups.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Misattributed paternity」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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