I can think of a thousand reasons for making it that way.

1. Partner doubt. But how do you ask without destroying your relationship.

2. Financial. Imagine paying maintenance on a child for 15 years and both you and the child find out you're not related?.

3. Emotional. See above.

I can see the civil liberties faction getting upset about it in regards to right to privacy but is an INDIVIDUAL entitled to that when it comes to two people creating a child?.

You have selected only one dimension of the issue, StG.

Once you have had a DNA test, you would be obliged to share its content with your insurance company.

They would then be able to assess your genetic disposition to a wide - and widening - range of hereditary conditions.

You premium would then reflect the actuarial calculation of the likelihood of your succumbing to one or more of this range of conditions, along with all the other risks..

Premiums would be adjusted for the revised risk profile.

It is actually a two-way street. If you had the same information - i.e. the actuarial stuff that was derived from your DNA data, you would be better off to self-insure (there would be no management expenses to deduct from your savings), which would deprive the insurance companies of your business.

Whichever way you cut it, it would require some massive changes to our insurance industry.

I can understand why some men would have doubts. However, I don't see how it could be made compulsory - sounds like another weapon to be used by a controlling partner - making women jump through hoops when they are very vulnerable, like after childbirth.

I think there should be the establishment of reasonable doubt before a DNA test is enforced.

On the plus side it would reveal the reality that the majority of male partners are indeed the genetic fathers and put a stop to this fear mongering and speculation.

And such action still won't help all the children fathered by promiscuous males into wombat behaviour.

I see not just the paternity/relation testing that StG is talking about, but the whole genome sequencing that Pericles alludes to as being standard procedure.

Most people have no idea of what's coming. I have been reading up on some of the sequencing methods that will be available in a few years.
http://www.genome.gov/27527584

The health insurance industry will definitely need a radical overhaul. But the benefits will be enormous. Imagine knowing beforehand what drugs will work properly, which foods or medications that a child has potential allergies to. Or what cancer genes that you have and knowing much more about what lifestyle choices or foods can make you live longer or know how to improve your immune system on a personal level, rather than a statistical probability derived from the whole population.

It's going to be cheap, quick and the therapies and benefits will be advancing as fast as the insurance companies. The funding paradigm will have to change. In fact I suspect that health insurance companies may not exist in the distant future as all medicine may have to be socialised.

StG compulsory testing at birth might have some advantages but it also reeks of yet more government inteference.

As a lesser of evils approach I'd suggest that the point for such testing should be before the first action where one party may be directly disadvantaged (or advantaged) by an outside decision based on an assumption of paternity. (I say paternity because I doubt that maternity is often in doubt). The points that come to mind are prior to the issuing of the first CSA assessment, division of property following a relationship breakdown (if child residency will impact on the outcome).

Not an ideal solution. There may be no good solutions. My understanding is that in about 1/4 of the cases where someone has serious enough doubts of paternity to seek a paternity test DNA testing shows their concerns to be valid. That is I assume a very small proportion of the population.

The whole thing is messy, on the one hand it's argued that an established parental type relationship with a child constitutes parental financial responsibility for that child but on the other hand a one night fling with no knowledge of a subsequent conception and birth also constitutes the same responsibility.

Those who supposedly have such a poor relationship with "their" child that almost no contact with the child is seen as important by either themselves or the other parent of the child are likewise deemed to have that responsibility.

In silliest of case's you might get someone who is not the biological parent of a child being required to provide financial support for the child and it's parent based on a relationship with the child which was not considered important enough to have the child continue to reside near enough to the payer to continue the relationship. I don't know how often that happens but it's easy to see how it could happen.

Compulsary DNA testing would prevent a number of gross injustices but it would open up other harms. Which is the lesser harm?

R0bert

Interestingly enough Bugsy, Australia's Private Health Insurance industry will hardly be affected at all.

>>The health insurance industry will definitely need a radical overhaul.<<

This is because - by legislation - the insurers cannot discriminate.

The premiums are calculated on the basis of the entire population, so-called "community rating". Thus the health potential of an individual is totally irrelevant to the premium.

You can be 21 or 71, you pay the same for the same cover, since the actuarial basis is... everybody.

What will change, as you quite rightly point out, is that if this information becomes a) freely available and b) universal, we should expect the benefits to flow through in better targetted disease management, preventive actions and so on.

The devil will be in the interim - i.e. before we get to the universal awareness bit - when individuals will be reluctant to share this information with their Life Insurance company, while those companies will feel well within their rights to demand it.