Washington State vs. Lydia Fairchild: Is the DNA test really true (6 photos)

Lydia Fairchild's life was turned upside down when she needed to prove her relationship with her own children.





In December 2002, a 26-year-old mother of three and a pregnant the fourth divorced her husband and began life anew. It's obvious that she had little money and she turned to civil services to oblige ex-spouse to pay child support. In general, an ordinary situation.

Assigned DNA testing is absolutely normal situation. Lydia calmly passed the test and went home. Social service called the girl a few days later and ordered to immediately come to where she was met by the police and taken for interrogation. A stunned Lydia found out that, according to the results of the analysis, she is not a mother to my children. Kinship - 0.00%. That is, as logically assumed social services, or Fairchild used a surrogate mother, or... she stole three children.



Lydia with her children

The shocked Lydia remembered very well that she herself had given birth to her children. The ex-husband also confirmed the birth. On the other side of the scale there was a DNA test, which, as you know, does not lie, and is significant argument in court. Lydia was not just denied alimony - she was threatened removal of children.

The woman began collecting evidence, starting with a photo where she pregnant, where she holds babies in her arms, she collected everything that was. Her mother told reporters that she did not believe in the accusations against her daughters, because she was literally in childbirth, she saw how they were born her grandchildren, holding them in her arms.

Then Lydia called the obstetrician who took her birth. He too greatly surprised. Of course, he agreed to confirm the fact of birth children in court. The girl also decided to retake the test in an independent laboratories, because the tests could simply be confused. But different laboratories gave the same result - 0% relationship of the mother with her children.





In the meantime, the state filed a lawsuit against Lydia Fairchild. Lawyers shrugged their shoulders and did not undertake to defend the woman in court, because knew what to oppose to the DNA test. Three meetings and all lost. Neither the obstetrician, neither relatives, nor photographs helped. The threat of removal of children was almost on the doorstep.

But Lydia was able to find a lawyer. Alan Tindell took over her case, began proceedings and found in a New England scientific journal Journal of Medicine story about Karen Keegan, 52, who needed to transplant a kidney. The donors were supposed to be her children, but the DNA test, just like Lydia, showed zero relationship.

Karen's children were not taken away - the doctors thought that such DNA readings are related to the method of fertilization. The solution came from unexpected side: shortly before the events described, Karen was removed thyroid nodule and biomaterial remained in the laboratory. When doctors compared the DNA of Karen's children with her biomaterial, the result showed kinship 99.9.

I mean, there was some DNA in Karen's body.



Karen Keegan

The lawyer clung to this story and in the laboratory there were sent blood, hair and saliva to Lydia. And the doctors saw very different results. Doctors came to the conclusion that when Lydia Fairchild was still fetus, she had a twin. She "absorbed" him and took his DNA for herself, becoming, so-called in medicine, a chimera. In the world officially only 40 cases of chimerism have been reported, but many simply do not know that they contain several DNA, because not everyone passes the tests.



Lydia Fairchild

Tindell demanded from the judge that at the fourth birth of Lydia a representative of the social service was present. The consideration of the case was delayed until testing.

Lydia gave birth in a friendly company of an obstetrician, a lawyer and social worker who saw with his own eyes the appearance baby. The child immediately underwent a DNA test, which showed a relationship with mother 0.00%. Everyone was discouraged: both doctors and social services, and Lydia herself.

When Fairchild recovered from childbirth, the doctors started her to examine and they managed to find a common line of DNA with all the children girls - in the reproductive organs. In court, Fairchild re-granted all medical research, and at the same time a DNA test of his mother, confirmed kinship with grandchildren.



The case of Lydia Fairchild became a sensation not only in medicine, but also in court cases.

An error-free DNA test, it turns out, can also lie. More precisely, do not lie, but give pseudo-false information.

Law professor David H. Kay published an article "Chimer criminals", in which he raised a serious question: how to work now forensic experts, if there is a chimerism that can refute any analysis. The phenomenon of chimerism has been studied very little at the moment. Fairchild and Keegan's chimerism seems to have been caused by their mother's womb had a twin, but they swallowed it, becoming the owners two DNAs at once - his and his.