Editorial Comment: DNA: Boon for yet another application of modern science

a DNA test to reverse a maintenance order after the tests proved they were not the father of the child in question.
Equally importantly another group of men have found that they definitely were the father, and will now, we hope, be good and loving parents without worries.
There might even be need to think about changing the law used in paternity suits. The existing law dates back to a time when there was no scientific way of proving or disproving paternity.
The mother seeking a maintenance order and ruling on paternity had to prove that the man sued could be the father, that there had been an intimate contact roughly nine months before the child was born. Once that has been established, at least on the balance of probabilities, the courts declare the man the responsible parent and make an appropriate order.
The onus of proof then switches to the man, he has to disprove he is the father. Blood tests, relying on ever-finer graduations of blood groups, could in some cases provide this evidence but frequently they just gave probabilities, not a definite answer one way or the other.
DNA testing now can do this, and prove positively that a man, or his twin brother, was definitely the parent, or was definitely not the parent. And the whole test costs US$500 to test the three samples, a sum some men might consider a prudent investment. But, at the moment, all testing has to be done in South Africa. If there was enough demand for testing from Zimbabwe, then obviously a standard DNA laboratory could be set up here. The equipment is off the shelf.
We think this should be seriously investigated. Paternity suits are usually only a minor component of the work of such a lab. Most such laboratories do a lot more work identifying human remains and are used ever more often by police forces who wish to associate something like a hair found at a crime scene with a suspect, or to eliminate the suspect totally.
In fact so routine is this testing that there is a growing row in several countries over the right of police forces to maintain a database of DNA data, including both those who were connected and those who were not. Those found innocent strongly dislike the fact that their genetic ID is on call by any policeman. It is a bit like the row over retaining fingerprint records of innocent people, only more so.
But the Zimbabwe Republic Police are not yet involved in these debates, largely because they seek DNA tests in only the most exceptional of circumstances. We presume that if there was a laboratory in Zimbabwe able to do such tests quickly at a moderate fee, the police would rapidly become one of the major users.
Generally we think that the public would go along with this. For a start the innocent could frequently be eliminated early in an investigation, saving them distress and the police a lot of wasted effort.
We could then debate over which DNA data could legitimately be retained by the State and which should be destroyed and when.
A cheaper and quicker paternity test could also mean legal changes. The time for tests takes so long, at the moment, that the putative father pays maintenance until he can prove otherwise.
If the results could be known quickly, we could change the law to simply ordering such a test at the very beginning of the suit, the courts would then only need to hear argument over the amount of maintenance rather than waste a lot of expensive time in discussion over whether the man was the father. In some cases it might even be cheaper for the State to pay the costs of such a test for a poor man rather than pay for a day of court time in a contested matter.
We think the potential work for such a laboratory from both civil and criminal authorities would be sufficient to make it viable in Zimbabwe, and if there was some slack time we could compete in the regional market with South Africa.
So we hope that the Health Ministry, the police, the University of Zimbabwe, the courts and the private health sector will together consider the options and then give Zimbabwe the boon of yet another application of modern science.