Why are they assholes? Because they didn’t know about chimeras?
Comment on DNAddy
bedwyr@piefed.ca 17 hours ago
There was a woman who went to prison for this, her chimera baby’s dna contradicted her story, I think to get public assistance of some kind, and the dna test convinced the state assholes she was lying and they sent her to prison, I think some researchers exonerated her eventually.
minorkeys@sh.itjust.works 16 hours ago
WiredBrain@lemmy.ca 16 hours ago
Because they don’t know the limits of their tools and were convinced they’re infallible, and as a result an innocent woman was punished by the state. Just a guess.
minorkeys@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
Nobody knows the limit of their tools until those limits are known. Where did you decide they thought they were infallible? They followed the law they have, as is their job. Justice is not perfect, we don’t have all the answers, jumping to such vicious conclusions speaks more about you than them.
sukhmel@programming.dev 2 hours ago
Nobody knows the limit
I’m not sure, but let’s say that’s true. They usually also don’t care to know the limits. Another interesting case is Patricia Stallings (emphasis mine):
an American woman who was wrongfully convicted of murder after the death of her son Ryan on September 7, 1989. Because testing seemed to indicate an elevated level of ethylene glycol in Ryan’s blood, authorities suspected antifreeze poisoning, and arrested Stallings the next day. She was convicted of murder in early 1991, and sentenced to life in prison.
Stallings gave birth to another child while incarcerated awaiting trial; this next child was diagnosed with methylmalonic acidemia (MMA), a rare genetic disorder that can mimic antifreeze poisoning. Prosecutors initially did not believe that the sibling’s diagnosis had anything to do with Ryan’s case. Stallings’ lawyer was forbidden from producing available evidence as proof of the possibility. After a professor in biochemistry and molecular biology had some of Ryan’s blood samples tested, he was able to prove that the child had also died from MMA, and not from ethylene glycol poisoning.
ReasonablePea@sh.itjust.works 16 hours ago
I mean unless they proved she was not providing for the kid I think they’re assholes. But I shouldn’t assume
minorkeys@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
If the state has good reason to believe someone had abducted children, I would want them to intervene, would you not?
LwL@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
If no one is missing those children, that’s not good reason to believe she kidnapped them at all. I want the children to be happy, and regardless of genetics taking them from the parents that raised them into a foster home will just damage them (unless parents are just very abusive)
Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Are you thinking of Lydria Fairchild? In her case she wasn’t sent to prison. However, her two children were taken from her and placed in foster care for a while. Lawyers were refusing to represent her, due to the belief that DNA evidence is too strong to fight. On the plus side, she was pregnant again. So a court officer was present during her third child’s birth.
Despite being at the birth and witnessing blood draws from both mother and child, the court still claimed she was being untruthful somehow. Thankfully, that birth and its evidence was peculiar enough to attract a lawyer to finally represent her. Only after that did the investigation into potential chimerism arise.
More info here - …asu.edu/…/case-lydia-fairchild-and-her-chimerism…
bedwyr@piefed.ca 1 hour ago
Might be I just heard it on a podcast, Poor Historians, Misadventures in Medical History, and I may have gotten the story wrong.