Word: thelen
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Dates: during 2002-2002
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While the decline of the two-parent family in Germany may worry traditionalists, it has proved a boon for a growing number of biotech companies specializing in paternity tests. "Since 1998 the number of orders has increased tenfold," boasts Kirsten Thelen, co-founder of Wiesbaden's ID Lab, which prepared 4,000 DNA fingerprints last year. Says Thelen: "The demand has existed for a long time, but now word has got around that there is an affordable way to obtain proof of parenthood...
...trying to prove or disprove paternity. Yet an increasing number of moms, most of them single, also make use of the tests. In about 10% of the cases, the biotech firms are consulted "by grown-up children who want to make sure who their parents really are," says Thelen. "In those instances the client's biography usually shows some unclear points...
...Thelen thinks that some of the men who decide to carry out private paternity checks "are simply driven by the age-old male fear" that they may have been cuckolded by their partner - a fear that could have been fanned by a friend's remark that the chip doesn't look as if it's off the old block. Indeed, British biologist Robin Baker analyzed the results of 16 paternity studies in 1996 and concluded that at least one in 10 children in the Western world was not sired by the man believed to be the father. The number...