A Canadian DNA laboratory knowingly delivered prenatal paternity check outcomes that routinely recognized the mistaken organic fathers — ruling out the actual dads — and left a path of shattered lives across the globe, a CBC Information investigation has discovered.
Harvey Tenenbaum, the proprietor of Viaguard Accu-Metrics, advised a CBC producer with a hidden digicam throughout a dialog in his workplace that prenatal paternity check outcomes that his laboratory produced for a couple of decade had been “by no means that correct.”
The hidden digicam dialog unfolded within the midst of a months-long CBC Information investigation right into a years-long sample of faulty outcomes produced by Viaguard’s non-invasive prenatal paternity testing. The check — if accomplished appropriately — matches DNA from a fetus that’s in a mom’s blood with the organic father’s DNA.
Viaguard, based mostly in Toronto, offered its prenatal checks by numerous associated on-line storefronts with names like Prenatal Paternities Inc. and Paternity Depot.
“The check was not that correct…. And we’re leery of that check now,” stated Tenenbaum.
Tenenbaum is 91 and nonetheless runs the laboratory, exhibiting up onsite most days, answering telephones and assembly with clients.
After North Bay resident Corale Mayer acquired conflicting prenatal paternity checks from Viagaurd, she discovered others with comparable tales.
A longtime businessman, it appears he started promoting DNA companies by Viaguard within the early 2000s, registering a prenatal paternity division in 2013, in line with enterprise information.
In the course of the hidden digicam encounter, he offered himself as a seasoned scientific knowledgeable who’s seen all of it, and, in a matter-of-fact tone, stated he is aware of mistaken prenatal paternity outcomes may inflict lasting injury on lives.
“There’s loads concerned if it will get screwed up,” Tenenbaum advised the CBC Information producer, who posed as a potential buyer searching for a paternity check.
“What if it is the mistaken man named and also you’re aborting your little one of, you already know, a mistaken particular person…. We are able to think about every little thing occurs in life…. You see all of them, and worse, and worse.”
He additionally described cases the place Viaguard’s checks had been confirmed mistaken throughout a delivery.
“That has occurred. Take a look at the white man and the infant got here out Black, and the white man’s saying: ‘What is going on on right here?'” stated Tenenbaum.
When CBC Information later straight approached Tenenbaum, he reversed himself, saying the checks had been “correct” and “good.” He stated he stopped promoting them over rising overhead prices.
CBC Information interviewed dozens of folks whose lives had been impacted by Viaguard’s mistaken prenatal paternity check outcomes. Many former clients paid from $800 to barely greater than $1,000 for the laboratory’s house check kits from 2014 to 2020.
The interviews included women and men in Montreal, North Bay, Ont., and Victoria. Different former clients interviewed had been in Montana, Georgia, California, Guatemala, the U.Ok. and Australia.
In lots of instances, aftershocks nonetheless ripple, as a dad or mum tries to make up for misplaced time or struggles to seek out the best strategy to reveal the reality about paternity.
“I actually hate the identify Viaguard,” stated Corale Mayer, 22, from North Bay, Ont.
A Viaguard paternity check advised Atlanta resident John Brennan he was going to be a father when he was 21. One other check would later show he wasn’t the dad.
Mayer acquired two mistaken prenatal paternity check outcomes — one recognized the mistaken organic father, the opposite dominated out the precise one — that altered the trajectory of her 2020 being pregnant.
It pushed her to attempt to contain a person who needed nothing to do along with her or her little one, she stated.
“It is extraordinarily traumatic.”
Mayer helped begin a social media-based group with dozens of others who additionally stated their lives had been burned by Viaguard’s mistaken prenatal paternity outcomes.
“After I discovered there have been different folks … it was a aid,” she stated. “Lastly, I may speak to anyone, and they’d be like, ‘Yup, I get that.’ It was good to really feel I’m not insane.”
‘Get me my cash’
Viaguard claimed to make use of a typical prenatal paternity check commercially out there to the general public since about 2014.
Specialists say it’s extremely correct, if carried out correctly.
A non-invasive prenatal paternity check, it matches 1000’s of genomic information factors — referred to as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) — within the fetal DNA, which flows within the mom’s blood, with 1000’s of SNPs within the father’s DNA.
Nonetheless, Tenenbaum appeared to rely extra on guesswork than science when dealing with a minimum of some prenatal paternity checks, former workers alleged in interviews with CBC Information.
Sika Richot labored for almost three months answering telephones for Viaguard in 2019.
Richot stated she was coached to ask ladies searching for prenatal paternity check kits about instances of their menstrual cycles and the dates that they had intercourse with completely different males — info that’s ineffective for a DNA check.
Employees put the dates into a web-based ovulation calendar to slender down the potential organic father, she stated. Richot then entered the data right into a kind that went to Tenenbaum for signoff.
“[Tenenbaum] would all the time make a remark like: ‘It is positively this one [the biological father]. It is this one, it is received to be this one,'” stated Richot.
Samantha Friday, who additionally answered telephones, labored there for barely greater than a 12 months. She stated Tenenbaum micromanaged all laboratory operations.
“It sounds horrible to say, but it surely was sort of like … get me my cash. That was it. Simply sort of get me my cash,” stated Friday.
“I feel anybody who has had their DNA accomplished for no matter functions within the Toronto lab ought to in all probability contemplate redoing them.”
Richot and Friday didn’t deal with any samples or conduct any laboratory work whereas working at Viaguard.
Similar man, similar lab, conflicting outcomes
In 2019 Mayer, at 19, discovered she was pregnant. It was a bodily troublesome unplanned being pregnant throughout a complicated time in her life. She was prescribed drugs to cope with intense nausea that usually overwhelmed and debilitated her.
The bodily issues compounded one other stress that overshadowed her being pregnant. She did not know the identification of her child’s father. She stated it made her really feel disgrace, however Mayer believed a prenatal paternity check may give her some semblance of stability.
“I used to be like, I actually need to do that now,” she stated. “The earlier I discover out, the earlier my life can proceed.”
She discovered Viaguard on-line utilizing the search phrases “prenatal paternity testing close to me.”
The laboratory supplied an choice to pay the $800 in two installments. The check required her blood and a potential father’s DNA to make a match.
“It is a DNA firm, it is science. It is black and white,” stated Mayer.
Posing as a possible buyer, and utilizing a hidden digicam, a CBC producer requested Viaguard proprietor Harvey Tenenbaum about his firm’s paternity checks.
Mayer acquired a prenatal paternity testing equipment from Viaguard within the mail. She was documenting her being pregnant for a college undertaking and a buddy filmed her as she pricked her finger with a lancet and squeezed drops of blood right into a vial.
Then, she secured the inner-cheek buccal swab from the person she believed was the daddy, packed the sealed samples, put them in a field and despatched them within the mail to Viaguard.
The check outcome stated the person she examined wasn’t the daddy. She despatched a second set of samples to Viaguard from a unique man. This time, the outcomes stated he was the match.
After the delivery of her daughter, the presumed organic father demanded a postnatal paternity check. Mayer agreed and turned to Viaguard once more. This time, the outcome stated he wasn’t the organic father.
“You understand if you’re simply so hysterically upset, you snigger such as you’re simply past emotion?” stated Mayer. “There is no means that that is actual.”
Two months after the delivery, one other laboratory decided the person Mayer first examined, the one Viaguard stated was a zero per cent chance of a match, was her daughter’s precise organic father.
Mayer supplied CBC Information with copies of the check outcomes.
Viaguard started promoting prenatal paternity checks in December 2010 for $800, in line with web archive information saved by the WayBack Machine.
CBC Information decided Viaguard stopped providing the checks between December 2020 and someday in 2021.
CBC Information despatched Tenenbaum and his lawyer an in depth record of questions in March and requested an interview, however acquired no response to that question.
In late March, a reporter approached Tenenbaum exterior his laboratory to ask him when he first discovered issues with the checks and when he stopped providing them.
“The checks had been by no means flawed, the checks are good, the checks are correct,” he stated as he walked to his automobile.
He urged clients had been chargeable for errors in outcomes due to the best way they gathered their samples to ship within the mail.
“You do 1000’s of checks and half the errors are the gathering issues,” stated Tenenbaum.
“You are not testing folks, you are testing one stain towards one other stain.”
Viaguard had carried out 1000’s of prenatal paternity checks over time, he stated.
A worth hike in a testing substance, not outcomes repeatedly naming false fathers, triggered him to cease the checks, stated Tenenbaum.
‘Not one thing that could possibly be accomplished at house’
Dr. Mohammad Akbari, director of analysis on the molecular genetics laboratory on the Ladies’s Faculty Hospital in Toronto, stated the kind of check Viaguard claimed to make use of relies upon closely on having sufficient of a mom’s blood to have the ability to extract the fetus’s DNA.
A number of drops squeezed right into a vial from a finger is just not sufficient, stated Akbari. A correct check would draw a minimum of 10 millilitres of blood from a mom’s vein, he stated.
Viaguard did, in some cases, use blood drawn from a vein. Some clients who used Viaguard in 2015 advised CBC Information that somebody who seemed to be a nurse visited their house to attract their blood. In different cases, together with in a California lawsuit that resulted in a settlement, clients went to a neighborhood laboratory with Viaguard’s check equipment for the blood draw.
These checks additionally wrongly recognized a organic father.
It is nearly not possible, if accomplished appropriately, for these extremely correct checks, which line up 1000’s of DNA information factors for a match, to supply a false constructive match, to establish the mistaken man because the organic father of the fetus, Akbari stated.
But, a false constructive Viaguard outcome occurred to John Brennan in 2015.
“As quickly as I noticed these check outcomes, it was like a line within the sand. Instantly, proper then and there, issues simply modified,” he stated.
Brennan, from Atlanta, Ga., purchased a home and a automobile to organize for the sudden new actuality as a father. His household swung in for help. His mom was feted with a “grandmother bathe” by mates.
After the delivery, his son grew to become his world, however severe pressure developed with the kid’s mom. Brennan employed a lawyer and spent about $20,000 in a authorized battle over custody.
The kid’s mom, with out telling him, obtained a separate postnatal paternity check that confirmed one other man was the precise organic father. She broke the information to him over a textual content message in January 2017.
Brennan stated he spiralled right into a self-destructive despair. Gaps stay in his reminiscence of that point.
“There’s not a handbook on the best way to deal with elevating a child for eight months after which discovering out that it isn’t yours,” stated Brennan. “You are left in a mysterious, darkish place mentally.”
Whereas Brennan believed he was a father, he tattooed the kid’s identify, Travis, on his higher arm. It now reads: “Travesty.”
Gaps in laws
Affiliate Prof. Ma’n Zawati, analysis director for McGill College’s Centre of Genomics and Coverage in Montreal, says personal industrial DNA laboratories do not want licences to function and promote companies.
Entities like Viaguard can function by sliding by Canada’s patchwork of laws, siloed amongst skilled our bodies, client safety businesses, authorities entities and departments on the federal and provincial ranges, he stated.
Well being Canada stated in an emailed assertion to CBC Information it doesn’t regulate industrial DNA labs like Viaguard.
The federal authorities ought to step in and fill gaps to guard shoppers from a proliferation of firms promoting DNA checks and fixes that would have severe impacts on the well being and welfare of people and society, stated Zawati.
“There’s an expectation to guard the general public,” he stated. “There’s a position for Well being Canada to play in that.”
The Requirements Council of Canada (SCC) stripped Viaguard of its accreditation in 2015. Federal Court docket information from the laboratory’s failed authorized bid to reverse the choice present the federal company was conscious of bigger points with Viaguard.
The SCC acquired 9 complaints towards Viaguard over 4 years, together with two “representing a number of clients,” in line with a 2017 SCC report.
“A typical theme of faulty or inaccurate outcomes” ran by the complaints which targeted on “paternity or familial testing,” stated the report.
Viaguard nonetheless does enterprise. On its web site, it affords postnatal paternity and maternal DNA checks, together with DNA chicken sexing, bait to sterilize mice and rats, and canine DNA breed testing.
It runs web sites promoting remedies for foot fungus and dementia whereas working digital storefronts below names like Paternity Authorized, Paternity Africa and International Paternity.
Viaguard’s continued existence frustrates some former clients like Mayer.
“The principle factor I need for Viaguard is for it to shut down,” stated Mayer. “I feel that is a collective feeling. I do not assume anybody would even think about that it could nonetheless be open.”
