3 ms·

While I realize that one is going to find droids in government departments like social services, the mindless robotism displayed by government agents in this ca

by korethr 12y ago

While I realize that one is going to find droids in government departments like social services, the mindless robotism displayed by government agents in this case were rather disturbing. To be absolutely certain that the child is hers, they had an officer there in the room to witness the birth. And yet despite actually witnessing the birth, it was decreed that the child must not be hers because of the DNA mismatch. I can think of a scenario besides chimerism where this could happen: in vitro fertilization using eggs donated from another woman. But if someone has the means to have access to IVF, it strikes me as implausible that she'd try to scam welfare. Such implausibility should have occurred to the government agents on the case as well.

javajosh 12y ago
Consider this another data-point in the case against means-testing for welfare and for basic income. I fail to understand how the parentage of the children was at issue at all: the children were her dependents, she (and they) needed help. Why was parentage an issue? Did the children magically not need help if she wasn't their biological parent? We can shake our heads at how the machine we all fund chews people up and spits them out, and try to improve that machine, the better solution is to eliminate an entire class of "chewing" through simply eliminating means-testing and having something like a basic income.
- hnal943 12y ago
  As has been pointed out, it would be easy to grab someone else's children in order to fraudulently sign up for government checks. In my own city, there was a massive fraud operation of mothers claiming to run (federally subsidized) day-care facilities and listing each other's kids as the attendees. It was all on paper of course; no kids were being looked after. That's the type of abuse that will always occur and needs to be curbed in some way.
kghose 12y ago
One probability mentioned is that she is acting as a surrogate mother - getting money for bearing an embryo. Also, I can see the postion of the govt. officials. You have some training in a technique, but you are not an expert. By all accounts the technique is infailable. Here is a person whose account differs from the data. Your a priori on this being clever fraud rather than a little known, one in several billion case is high. I think the officials were doing their job. It was a complex case and it went up to a complex level (courts, judges, expert witnesses). What I didn't like is the threat (We can take them away). I think we should have techniques to out fraud without threatening people who have not proven to be guilty.
- nardi 12y ago
  > One probability mentioned is that she is acting as a surrogate mother No, this doesn't make any sense. A surrogate mother doesn't RAISE the children she gives birth to. That would just make her a regular mother. Why would they take away her children when no one has come forward to claim them? There's no crime. It's not illegal for your DNA to not match your childrens' DNA.
  - gwern 12y ago
    > Why would they take away her children when no one has come forward to claim them? Because you have no idea where the genetic mother could have come from, anywhere in the world (and given vitrification, anywhen), the absence of evidence doesn't show much. What do you do, put up an ad in the classifieds: 'are you missing two embryos? please cal 911'? As the other commenter says, this is an interesting failure mode which it's not clear you can do much about without allowing many other severe failures: it's much more likely that it's an extreme fraud which has beat detection thus far than chimerism, which makes the actual chimeras go through a lot to prove the latter, but if you loosen the standards, then what...?
    - scholia 12y ago
      It still doesn't make any sense. You have a women who has provably given birth to children that don't share her DNA, and who is bringing them up as her children. Taking them away solves nothing. In fact, it's inhuman to the point of insanity. It's also financially nonsensical, since the cost of children in care is dramatically higher than social assistance, and quite likely to get worse (because of the impact on the kids of being torn from their mother). A system not operated by idiots would have suggested a quick and cheap compromise, such as making the kids legally hers by adoption.
      - gwern 12y ago
        > You have a women who has provably given birth to children that don't share her DNA, and who is bringing them up as her children. Yes, so? Stealing someone's kids is OK if you then bring them up while, of course, on welfare?

by korethr 12y ago

javajosh 12y ago

Consider this another data-point in the case against means-testing for welfare and for basic income. I fail to understand how the parentage of the children was at issue at all: the children were her dependents, she (and they) needed help. Why was parentage an issue? Did the children magically not need help if she wasn't their biological parent? We can shake our heads at how the machine we all fund chews people up and spits them out, and try to improve that machine, the better solution is to eliminate an entire class of "chewing" through simply eliminating means-testing and having something like a basic income.

hnal943 12y ago
As has been pointed out, it would be easy to grab someone else's children in order to fraudulently sign up for government checks. In my own city, there was a massive fraud operation of mothers claiming to run (federally subsidized) day-care facilities and listing each other's kids as the attendees. It was all on paper of course; no kids were being looked after. That's the type of abuse that will always occur and needs to be curbed in some way.

kghose 12y ago

One probability mentioned is that she is acting as a surrogate mother - getting money for bearing an embryo. Also, I can see the postion of the govt. officials. You have some training in a technique, but you are not an expert. By all accounts the technique is infailable. Here is a person whose account differs from the data. Your a priori on this being clever fraud rather than a little known, one in several billion case is high. I think the officials were doing their job. It was a complex case and it went up to a complex level (courts, judges, expert witnesses). What I didn't like is the threat (We can take them away). I think we should have techniques to out fraud without threatening people who have not proven to be guilty.

nardi 12y ago
> One probability mentioned is that she is acting as a surrogate mother No, this doesn't make any sense. A surrogate mother doesn't RAISE the children she gives birth to. That would just make her a regular mother. Why would they take away her children when no one has come forward to claim them? There's no crime. It's not illegal for your DNA to not match your childrens' DNA.
- gwern 12y ago
  > Why would they take away her children when no one has come forward to claim them? Because you have no idea where the genetic mother could have come from, anywhere in the world (and given vitrification, anywhen), the absence of evidence doesn't show much. What do you do, put up an ad in the classifieds: 'are you missing two embryos? please cal 911'? As the other commenter says, this is an interesting failure mode which it's not clear you can do much about without allowing many other severe failures: it's much more likely that it's an extreme fraud which has beat detection thus far than chimerism, which makes the actual chimeras go through a lot to prove the latter, but if you loosen the standards, then what...?
  - scholia 12y ago
    It still doesn't make any sense. You have a women who has provably given birth to children that don't share her DNA, and who is bringing them up as her children. Taking them away solves nothing. In fact, it's inhuman to the point of insanity. It's also financially nonsensical, since the cost of children in care is dramatically higher than social assistance, and quite likely to get worse (because of the impact on the kids of being torn from their mother). A system not operated by idiots would have suggested a quick and cheap compromise, such as making the kids legally hers by adoption.
    - gwern 12y ago
      > You have a women who has provably given birth to children that don't share her DNA, and who is bringing them up as her children. Yes, so? Stealing someone's kids is OK if you then bring them up while, of course, on welfare?