4 ms·

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

by 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?
      - scholia 12y ago
        There was never any evidence that she stole the kids, or that they had ever belonged to anybody else. In fact, there was a vast amount of reliable, historical evidence that they were her kids. The _only_ evidence to the contrary turned out to be wrong, and it was proven wrong when she was observed giving birth. Otherwise, even if she had stolen the kids, the government action was insane. As I already pointed out, it costs social services a lot more to break up a functioning family than it costs to provide enough support to keep it together.

by kghose 12y ago

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?
    - scholia 12y ago
      There was never any evidence that she stole the kids, or that they had ever belonged to anybody else. In fact, there was a vast amount of reliable, historical evidence that they were her kids. The _only_ evidence to the contrary turned out to be wrong, and it was proven wrong when she was observed giving birth. Otherwise, even if she had stolen the kids, the government action was insane. As I already pointed out, it costs social services a lot more to break up a functioning family than it costs to provide enough support to keep it together.