Is you is or is you ain't my baby?

It is a wise child that knows his own father. Genotyping means a wise father can know his own child. Testing a cheek swab from a baby can easily clear the matter up. This is a booming business in Britain, where around 10,000 such tests are thought to be carried out privately each year. Robin Baker, an academic-turned-author, reviewed the available data a few years ago and estimated that as many as 10% of children may not have been sired by their supposed fathers. That's why there was talk, in the run-up to the publication of the genetics white paper, of forbidding suspicious men from doing this without the mother's consent. In the event, the government decided against it, and opted merely to propose banning taking unauthorized DNA samples. This prohibition (which would not extend to the police) would avoid cases such as the one in America in which investigators employed by Kirk Kerkorian, a Hollywood mogul, got hold of the DNA of Steve Bing, a socialite, to try to establish whether Mr Bing was the father of Mr Kerkorian's wife's child.