Three Doctors Charged with DNA Fraud

Three Danish doctors face a prison sentence for DNA fraud in connection with a paternity case in which they used their positions to influence a court decision. The three doctors – who all work or have worked at the city hospital Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen (Denmark) – all played a part in convincing a court to rule against a woman claiming that the main defendant was the father of her child. The case began in 2010 when the main defendant allegedly impregnated a woman and convinced a colleague to write a false medical statement documenting that he was too ill to take a DNA test at Rigshospitalet’s genetic department, as is standard procedure in paternity testing cases in Denmark. He then used the medical statement to instead have a false DNA sample taken at Herlev Hospital, where his other accomplice worked, which led to the city court ruling against the woman’s claims base on the fraudulent DNA evidence. But the woman appealed the decision to the national court. The case ended with the main defendant having to retake a DNA test at the genetic department at Rigshospitalet, and the result showed that he was in fact the father of the child. All three defendants – who deny being guilty – have been charged with fraud and a number of other crimes that could add up to several years of prison time. Furthermore, the police also want the two accomplice doctors to be stripped of their right to practise medicine. “What’s happened is catastrophic,” Torben Goldin, the president of the Danish Court. “They have shaken one of the founding pillars of our society, which is trust in doctors.” This case highlights the importance of using a totally independent laboratory with the safeguards in place so that at no point can the results be influenced by one or more individuals testing the samples. At AlphaBiolabs we follow a strict chain of custody for the DNA samples and all the documentation involved. This includes taking photographs of the person taking the DNA test and copies of their identification. This procedure gives us 100% confidence that at no point can our DNA tests be influenced by anyone.