POPULATION-BRAZIL: DNA Testing, an Effective Social Remedy

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 17 2001 (IPS) - Some 15,000 Brazilians, mainly poor women seeking to confirm the identity of the fathers of their children, are waiting to undergo DNA testing in the Sao Paulo Institute of Social Medicine and Criminology (IMESC).

But they have at least a year-long wait ahead of them, because IMESC, which falls under the Secretariat of Justice of the state of Sao Paulo, attends an average of just 60 cases a day.

The service, which is provided free of charge, has been available for the past year and a half, during which time around 20,000 families – “especially the children” – have benefited, the superintendent of IMESC, pediatrician Sebastiao de Felice, told IPS.

The majority of those who have been assisted by the institute are mothers who take the results of the tests to court, to demand that the fathers legally recognise their children as their own, and that they pay child support.

In many cases it is a “question of survival,” because the mothers need the alimony to keep their children from the verge of starvation, said De Felice.

In 80 percent of the cases it is confirmed that the man identified by the mother is indeed the father, said the doctor. In addition, doubts and conflicts are clarified in around 95 percent of the remaining cases.

Before DNA testing – the results of which are accepted in court as definitive proof – was available, everything was more difficult, recalls María da Graça Savila Josino, a public defender in Porto Alegre, the capital of the state of Río Grande do Sul, in the extreme southern part of Brazil.

Since the blood tests used in the past had a large margin of error, other evidence was indispensable, like precise information on the time during which the couple lived together, and personal testimony.

Furthermore, it was impossible to resolve cases in which children were conceived during brief relationships or one-night stands, said Josino, who works in the poor neighbourhood of Restinga.

For the past two years, the Public Defenders’s Office of Río Grande do Sul has had the authority to order DNA testing, which is carried out free of charge by the Legal Medical Service or the local university. However, there is nearly a one-year delay, lamented Josino.

She pointed out that around 25 percent of the roughly 115 legal proceedings initiated each month by the Public Defender’s Office of Rio Grande do Sul involve paternity disputes.

IMESC, in Sao Paulo, stands out for the large number of tests it conducts as well as the quality of its work. In July, “1,139 findings based on DNA were sent to the courts, which means 1,139 families worked out their problems,” said De Felice.

Since each case involves at least three individuals – the mother, the father, and the child – the social impact is significant. Proof of paternity can help attenuate the effects of poverty, like malnutrition among children.

The statistics show that the worst poverty in Brazil is concentrated in female-headed households, in which women raise their children on their own, often in extremely difficult conditions. Child support is thus essential to the children of divorced or single mothers.

Furthermore, DNA testing can prevent the psychological damages often suffered by children with no known father and with no paternal surname on their birth certificates or identity cards, said De Felice.

According to official statistics, in the case of one-third of Brazil’s citizens, no father was identified in the birth registers – a reflection of the precarious situation of the family in this country of 170 million, which is also seen in the long waiting list at IMESC, located in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s richest and most industrialised state.

Brazil, Latin America’s giant, was populated in large part by the descendants of the offspring of Portuguese colonisers and indigenous women or African slaves, towards whose children the colonists felt little or no commitment or paternal responsibility.

Private laboratories that conduct DNA tests have mushroomed in the past few years in Brazil. But although there are currently more than 100, they only benefit those who can afford to pay around 350 dollars for each exam.

DNA testing as a means of proving paternity was made popular by high-profile cases like that of Sandra Regina, the daughter of a maid, who demonstrated six years ago that her father was Edson Arantes do Nascimento – the legendary footballer known worldwide as Pele.

Other rags-to-riches stories of young people born to poor mothers, often the domestics or lovers of rich men or politicians like former presidents Fernando Collor de Mello and Joao Goulart, both of whom had children out of wedlock, have also helped make DNA testing fashionable.

So has a popular sensationalist programme aired by the Brazilian Television System.

The show broadcasts family conflicts live, and host Carlos Massa announces that the disputes will be resolved by DNA testing, which has been used in 2,000 cases in the past four years – less than two percent of the total number of participants who have signed up for the show.

The sales of Biobrás, the company that produces the materials used in DNA testing, indicate that some 25,000 DNA exams are conducted annually nationwide, although most of them are carried out in Sao Paulo.

That number is expected to increase. Within the next 12 to 14 months, IMESC plans to expand its capacity fivefold, to 300 tests a day, after it acquires equipment that uses technology that has just begun to be utilised in the United States, said De Felice.

That will cut the waiting period of those applying for the exam to six months, and will allow the institute to advertise its services to more people, who due to lack of information have not yet turned to IMESC, he added.