Want to know the steps for legal testing? It sounds more complicated than it is. Trust us!
1. Purchase a DNA paternity test kit from your local drugstore: CVS, Duane Reade, Rite Aid, USA Drug, Walgreens or Walmart.com.
2. Call Identigene at 888-404-GENE.
3. Pay for the lab fee and collection fee with a major credit card or money order.
4. Agree upon a convenient place and time to meet with an Identigene sample collector. This person will witness the DNA collection, help you fill out appropriate paperwork, verify photo identification and mail in the DNA specimens.
5. Log in to www.identigene.com for your test results. If you are a visual learner like me, click here to watch the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6vsVuy0RD8

What if the alleged father swabs his four-legged friend instead of himself? Rest assured, Identigene’s laboratory is equipped to recognize these “Fido or Feline flags”. Our primers, analyzers, and controls are all geared for human DNA – anything else comes back as “no data”.

But what if the mom swabs her sister instead of her child to make sure the biological relationship is denied? Well, in the case of a close relative, we can usually tell if a person is related to one of the other people swabbed. However, if someone swabs a friend (ie, an unrelated person) instead of the child, the test results would obviously say the man is not the biological father. The best way to avoid controversy is to have all three people together when you are swabbing—that way you can be certain of whose samples are submitted. If it’s impossible for everyone to be in the same room for the swabbing, Identigene can arrange for a sample collector. There is an extra cost involved, so contact our customer support if you are interested in this option.

One more scenario: what if a person swabs themselves and the child with one swab? This one is easy! The lab would quickly identify it as a “mixed” profile.

In conclusion, a bit of reassurance…If our laboratory suspects fraudulent testing, we will contact the customer for a retest. Test results are strengthened by including DNA from BOTH the alleged father and biological mother as well as the child. That’s why our kit includes materials to test all three people, without an extra charge.

Life is full of “What Ifs”. Don’t leave DNA Paternity Testing to chance. If you don’t trust all involved parties to be honest, consider a “legal collection”. It’s simple. Just purchase the Identigene DNA Paternity Test from your local drugstore and call us before opening. We will handle the rest!

For cancer this is huge! Steve Jobs reportedly paid $100,000 to have diseased cells and healthy cells decoded in an attempt to cure his pancreatic cancer. I’ve read that this procedure is now available for $5,000. Prices are declining as more companies begin to offer the service. Worldwide spending on cancer drugs is expected to surpass $80 billion this year. The average cancer drug is known to work only 25% of the time, so this translates to $60 million wasted on ineffective cancer treatments.

DNA mutations can make healthy cells cancerous. Testing DNA to find these mutations can help pinpoint the best cancer drug option. I find this very encouraging, knowing that cancer touches just about everyone’s life! *Source http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/39707/

I could go on with a list common diseases that plague our society, perplex the medical community and weigh on insurance companies. Imagine if a simple cheek swab could tell your doctor what drug best fits your metabolism, brain chemistry or cell structure–and they get it right the first time! Amazing and quite encouraging!

Juvenile states he never signed the birth certificate when the baby was born. Juvenile’s case will be handled in Louisiana, his home state. According to CLASP, Center for Law and Social Policy, disestablishing paternity of non-marital children varies state by state. For Louisiana, there is no process specified. At any time, an involved party can petition the court to void the acknowledgment based on fraud, duress, material mistake of fact or that the person is not the biological parent of the child. *Source http://www.clasp.org/admin/site/publications/files/0111.pdf According to the LA process, Juvenile is totally within the boundaries declared by the state to get his child support withdrawn. As much as we hate to hear about children being neglected by means of child support, we understand that there are situations where paternity fraud is to blame and we encourage anyone questioning paternity to get tested.

I dug a little deeper into Juvenile and found that this isn’t his first paternity suit. Back in 2004, a DNA test was conducted in Georgia to prove Juvenile was the biological father of his alleged daughter, again to whom he owed back child support. The case is said to have been resolved pleasantly by both parties and paternity was proven. Sadly, his daughter was murdered along with her mother and older half-sister in 2008. *Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juvenile_(rapper)

When I hear of situations like the one described above, I can’t help but picture the typical “lifestyle” of a rapper portrayed on TV – complete with expensive cars, mansions, pools, bankrolls and designer clothes while also seeing a child and single mother struggling to make ends meet without the help of a financially capable father. I think we can unfortunately conclude from this newsflash, some people view paternity answers not as music to the ears but rather drains to the wallet. We can all hope that this situation ends well and a child is provided for both financially and emotionally by his biological father.

Identigene just sponsored and returned from the ISIS Sex Tech 2012 conference in San Francisco, CA. This conference is centered on new media sources and sexual health for America’s youth.  I attended many breakout sessions that allowed me to better understand how to reach young people with Identigene’s message – 100% accurate, convenient, inexpensive at-home paternity testing that provides results in just 2 business days. It also opened my eyes to how the term “healthy sexuality” differs from group to group or person to person.

There was much conversation about risky sexual behaviors that lead to teen pregnancy and the spread of STDs.  The same risky behaviors may also cause a child to be raised without a father or force a father to miss out on raising his child because paternity has been wrongly assigned.  It’s more common than you think.  1 in 5 adults say they or a close family member or friend has been in a situation where a paternity test would be appropriate.

Identigene client support receives hundreds of phone calls and online chats a day from people asking about paternity testing. Although Identigene DNA Paternity Tests are the most convenient tests on the market (available at 20,000+ drugstores), we aren’t the only DNA paternity out there. This means there are probably tens of thousands of DNA tests processed each month by paternity testing laboratories.  Wow…I think from this we can gather protection isn’t always used or it isn’t always effective.

So is there really “safe sex”? Each person probably has his or her own opinion.  Some will give full responsibility to birth control. Others will argue that the only safe sex is within the confines of a committed, trusting long-term relationship. Others might say abstinence is the best policy.

Regardless of the strategy, I think that the message of practicing “safe sex” is important. Thank you ISIS and all of the non-profits that attended the conference for the work you do with our youth and young adults.

Once you are privileged to this knowledge, what would you do? Would you set out to find your biological father or would you merely accept that regardless of DNA, the man that raised you is your “father”. Unfortunately, Paternity Fraud is a real concern. Sometimes a mother decides a man would make a better father, regardless of DNA. Sometimes, the reason is as simple as the mother’s fear of rejection.

An independent documentary film was produced about this topic. The movie tells the story of Thackary Grossman. At 39 years old, his mother informed him the man who raised him is not his biological father. Thackary sets out on a quest to meet this unknown man and redefines his own identity in the process. Thackary’s Time, exposes the emotions that surround paternity deception and how all parties come to terms with the repercussions. Thackary and his biological father used the Identigene DNA Paternity Test to confirm their genetic connection. Watch the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch/v=MtE1cpSwRKo

Thackary’s Time is being shown at the Fairfax Film Festival, March 30, 7 p.m., cost $10 ticket, Fairfax Theater in Fairfax, CA.

How did you decide to make DNA testing your livelihood? My Penn State professor, fresh out of Cornell, turned me onto what is now my career. One day she taught us about deoxyribonucleic acid. Street name – DNA. I learned about nitrogenous bases and the hydrogen bonds that bound them together. I watched as DNA molecules migrated through a thick, gel like substance, racing towards the positive charge on the other side. Animations of complex molecular machinery replicating DNA strands held my attention like an Oscar-nominated movie. I was hooked. Is it really possible that this itsy-bitsy thing could hold so much information?

What type of education or training does a lab tech require?
The lab techs at IDENTIGENE have a Bachelor degree in either chemistry or a biological science. Plus, on the job there is a lot of required reading, observation, written exams, and trial runs with old samples before a new tech is considered “competent”.

How did you make your way to Identigene? I have family in Salt Lake City, the mountains are gorgeous and I specialize in DNA…it was a great fit.

You still seem excited about DNA, what’s your secret? The job is an interesting mix of lab management, science and helping people. Keeping a high-throughput DNA lab running well keeps me on my toes in a practical sense. Then, I can also engross myself in the world of DNA science. And when I say “engross myself in the world of DNA”, I mean it! IDENTIGENE delivers test results in just 2 working days, so we are streamlined to run hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of DNA samples each day – which is no small feat when you consider that each sample takes about 8 hours to go through the entire process! I feel a great sense of responsibility knowing that our team provides answers to families with such important questions.

Wow! How do you keep so many tests moving forward? We use smart, capable humans and (drum roll please…) robots! Our robots are known as “liquid handlers” and allow us to run many samples at one time. They mix the chemicals and other components that we need for each reaction, which is great because humans are more likely to mess up a calculation. As a lab tech, I “supervise” the robots as they run to make sure everything is done correctly and to take care of them if they need a fix. Gaining this experience with technologies and reactions is a great part of my job.

If you have questions about being a DNA Lab Technician, we would be happy to ask Kristen. Just post your question in the comments.

The article is correct, as long as we are using credit cards, what we purchase and where is totally traceable. In some cases, it is appreciated and it saves us time and money (if they send us coupons). In others, it is unsettling because you don’t know what is legitimate and what could be a scam – especially when it comes through via email or if it isn’t a major retailer or a familiar brand.

My mother used to always say, you are judged by the company you keep. Isn’t it amazing how old wisdom keeps current with what is going on in our world today?

In the event that a major retailer is reading my blog: Dear Mr. /Ms. Retailer, please send me coupons for the EXACT items I routinely purchase rather than their competitors. Forgive me for being brand loyal:)

Looking ahead to Monday’s President’s Day holiday, I investigated the idea of fatherless presidents. It turns out there are several of them. And other famous fatherless people? Plenty of those, too. This list is by no means comprehensive, but I wanted to share some names that I found very interesting. (Fatherless by means of father’s death, incarceration, non-shared custody, father abandonment or basic lack of parental involvement from biological father)

Famous Fatherless Presidents – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Grover Cleveland, Herbert Hoover, Gerald Ford, William Jefferson Clinton, Barack Obama

Famous Fatherless People – Alexander Hamilton, John Hancock, George Washington Carver, Fredrick Douglas, Michael Phelps, Jackie Robinson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mark Twain, Booker T. Washington, Aristotle, Mother Theresa, Julies Caesar, Cleopatra, Confucius, Nicolas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Leonardo da Vinci, Maya Angelou, Lance Armstrong, Jane Austen, Johann Sebastian Bach, Michele Bachmann, Halle Berry, Pierce Brosnan, James Brown, Carol Burnett, Coco Chanel, Charlie Chaplin, Cher, Agatha Christie, Eric Clapton, Patsy Cline, Bill Cosby, Tom Cruise, Rodney Dangerfield, James Dean, Ella Fitzgerald, Jodie Foster, Robert Frost, Whoopie Goldberg, Cuba Gooding, Gene Hackman, Audrey Hepburn, Julius Erving, Jesse Jackson, B.B. King, Larry King, Stephen King, George Lopez, Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe, Eddie Murphy, Jack Nicholson, Shaquille O’Neal, Al Pacino, Rosa Parks, Edgar Allen Poe, Wolfgang Puck, Rev. Al Sharpton, Gene Simmons, Jon Stewart, Quentin Tarantino, Leo Tolstoy, Mr. T, Tina Turner, Shania Twain, Mike Tyson, Hank Williams, and Malcolm X.

*source: “Fatherless America” list of famous fatherless children (25% of American presidents)