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16 J. Fam. L. 543 (1977-1978)
Resolution by HLA Testing of 1000 Paternity Cases Not Excluded by ABO Testing

handle is hein.journals/branlaj16 and id is 551 raw text is: RESOLUTION BY HLA TESTING OF 1000 PATERNITY CASES NOT EXCLUDED BY ABO TESTING by Paul I. Terasaki* I. INTRODUCTION A revolution in paternity testing is currently underway with the introduction of HLA testing. The HLA system of tissue types is so powerful in determining the probability of paternity that many of the older rules of evidence for blood tests in disputed paternity cases now require complete revi- sion. Generally, it has been assumed by American courts that blood testing is only valid for exclusion of paternity. This conclusion is based on the fact that when the putative father is not excluded by ABO testing, his chances of actually being the father are not usually high. Thus, for purposes of blood test evidence, any random male could have been the father almost as easily as the nonexcluded putative father. With HLA testing, the probability of a nonexcluded male being the actual father is usually over 90%. This high degree of discrimination in either excluding or including, with a high probability, a given male is a result of the extreme diversity of HLA types in the population. * B.A., 1950; M.A., 1952; Ph.D., 1956; University of California at Los Angeles, Professor of Surgery, School of Medicine, UCLA; member World Health Organiza- tion Nomenclature Committee for Leukocyte Antigens; member of editorial boards of several scientific journals including the Journal of Immunogenetics. The author is an internationally recognized authority on histocompatibility immunology and has written over 350 papers on HLA. He was the 1977 recipient of the Philip Levine Award of the American Society of Clinical Pathology for outstanding contributions to the field of blood grouping immunology. The author wishes to acknowledge the critical aid in performing this work and in gathering the data received from Dr. Domenico Bernoco, Dr. M.R. Mickey, Mr. David Gjertson, Ms. Judy Bond, and Mrs. Sondra Perdue. For the legal implications of HLA testing for paternity, see introductory mate- rial 16 J. FAM. L. 537 (1977-78) (in this issue).

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