FlasshePoint

Life, Minutiae, Toys, Irrational Phobias, Peeves, Fiber

May I Swab Your Cheek?

Posted on | March 2, 2008 at 9:21 pm | 5 Comments

In the Rite Aid circular in the Sunday paper today, there was an ad for a DNA Paternity Test Kit, on sale for $19.99. Home DNA Testing! That’s just what America needs! Find out who your baby daddy is without leaving the comfort of your home! Just be sure that he doesn’t notice you’re collecting his DNA! I guess it’s the logical next step – once you could get a pregnancy test at the drugstore, anything else is fair game. Next I’m sure they’ll have home STD tests, if they don’t already. Why get a doctor or lab involved at all?

I thought it must be a joke or something until I noticed it was actually a “collection” kit. Here’s a link to the website for this item. You pay the $20 or $30 for the kit and then send the collected samples to a lab to do the testing for another $120. Why do I have the feeling that the kit contains just a couple of Q-Tips and an envelope with the address of the lab on it? Maybe I should sell my own kits – seems like a money maker.

I’m not sure why this disturbs me as much as it does. I’m not some kind of morality crusader – far from it. I guess it’s just the fact that there’s a need and a market for this that gets to me. If I were dating a woman who had one of these kits in her medicine cabinet, I’d probably run the other way. Although it’s not much different from finding dandruff shampoo in there.

Latre.

Comments

5 Responses to “May I Swab Your Cheek?”

  1. InfK
    March 3rd, 2008 @ 3:14 am

    I wonder if anyone in their target market has second thoughts about trusting a DNA test to the same mail-in process that can’t seem to figure out how to get you a $3 rebate check in under 6 months – or indeed at all, more often than not.

    Nah. It’ll be fine.

  2. Flasshe
    March 3rd, 2008 @ 6:45 am

    I wonder if anyone in their target market has second thoughts about trusting a DNA test to the same mail-in process that can’t seem to figure out how to get you a $3 rebate check in under 6 months – or indeed at all, more often than not.

    Exactly – I can’t imagine this sort of thing holding up in a court of law. How do you even prove who the sample came from? It’s more like a fun party time game thing.

  3. Lisa
    March 3rd, 2008 @ 6:19 am

    Guys look in other people’s medicine cabinets? I thought that was pretty much a girl thing.

    But the bigger question is, if it costs $120 to test the DNA of baby, mother, and potential father why do the families of people on death row have to cough up $4,000 if they want to see their loved one exonnerated?

  4. yellojkt
    March 3rd, 2008 @ 6:55 am

    It’s either this or call in for a spot on the Maury Povich show.

  5. InfK
    March 3rd, 2008 @ 2:51 pm

    As for the price of the kit, I’m sure there were marketing studies done to determine what fraction of the overall cost should be put on the sticker up-front – the idea being to get someone to make a small investment (but not too small, lest they begin to wonder how a DNA test could be so cheap) then hit ‘em with the full cost later on after they’ve already anted up.

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