Ordering a DNA test in France is a crime punishable by heavy fines and jail time

This is not a joke. Read this article. I have had confirmation from official French websites that this was entirely true. If you order a paternity test via the Internet or by telephone in France, you risk a year in prison and a fine of € 15,000 (Article 226-28 of the Penal Code).

Practically any DNA test can be construed as a paternity test, even if it is not advertised as such. Anybody can disprove a man's paternity by comparing even very limited segments of DNA between two individuals. The only DNA test that wouldn't count as paternity test would be an mtDNA test (as mitochondrial DNA is only inherited through one's mother). Even an extremely basic test for a single mutation could in practice happen to disprove a paternity event, if the presumed father and son are homozygous for different alleles (e.g. the presumed father has the CC allele while the son has TT). The last example will only be conclusive in a minority of cases, but can still be regarded as a form of paternity test.

Since there is no probation possible for a paternity test (once you know, you know, and it cannot be undone), the jail sentence provided by the law cannot be converted into a suspended sentence. French judges also happen to have much less freedom to interpret the law as in countries using common law (i.e. in most of the English-speaking world). A French judge has to enforce the law the way lawmakers enacted it. In other words ordering a DNA in France will inevitably land you in prison if you are found guilty.

With this ridiculous legislation, France, the so-called land of Human Rights, is breaching some of men's most fundamental modern rights:

- the right of knowing one's genome, knowing who one is.
- the right of knowing one's genetic risks for diseases.
- the right of knowing for sure that a man is the father of his children
- the right of knowing if one was adopted
- the right to search for one's biological parent(s)
- the right to use genetic genealogy to complete one's paper genealogy.
- the right to know one's genetic make-up from a population genetics's point of view (knowing one's "ethnic admixtures" and where one fits in the world's genetic landscape).


It is time that French lawmakers put an end to this absurdity. What I cannot understand is how the French people, known for going on strike and staging nationwide demonstrations at the drop of a hat for much less serious infringement of their rights, and sometimes even for necessary reforms, have never objected to this serious breach of rights. How can the French gather millions of demonstrators for or against gay marriage (which concerns only a small minority of the population), but not fight for the essential rights listed above. How can a man ever love and care about his children without knowing if they are truly his ? And how can you invest in a proper upbringing and education of your kids if you don't know for sure they are yours ? It may sound cynical, but the figures don't lie. In any country, whatever the culture, religion, or degree of sexual freedom, at least a few percent of all children born under wedlock are not the husband's biological children. France has long been one of the most libertine countries on Earth, so French men should be more concerned than others about their presumed paternity.

That's ridiculous, I had never heard of that. No wonder Gerard Depardieu is a Russian Citizen now.
 
I also think it's possible, especially when thinking about eugenicidal tendencies and severe privacy violations. Since the French are known for having national pride, they are possibly a little bit more aware not to be controlled by foreign powers. Just my guess.

If that's the case this political correctness needs to come to an end in Europe. That's complete Bull
 
Could the "genetic avoidance" found in France have anything to do with their experiences in WWII (talk of "pure" Aryan race, etc.)?.

Nope. Their experience wasn't that bad considering some other countries.
My guess would be that the French government is aware of statistics on how much people practice sex out of marriage.
 
That's a shame because french dna is potentially one of the most interesting groups.

I undertsand wanting to protect women, the injunction over actually testing yourself has got to be a mistake.
 
If that's the case this political correctness needs to come to an end in Europe. That's complete Bull

It has nothing to do with political correctness, women protection or sex outside marriage.
 
Ok, so what's it about, then?

My cousin in Toulouse said to me, that its about not allowing tests for paternity issues unless ordered by blah, blah...............a part I did not understand.

He also said that tests for ancestry it was Ok
 
I'm not surprised...

Well, it's a mystery either way. I'm surprised by the number of people here in the U.S. who want nothing to do with historical genetic testing.

I'm not surprised that many in the U.S.A. do not want genetic testing. There is a very traditional Christian element that believes strongly that God created Man in his image and do not condone evolutionary studies, beliefs or teachings. DNA testing and all the implications they bring would not be in favour with this group.
 
If a can say something concerning France, I would say it is become a "jacobine" centralist state which always fear the regionalisms and has repulsion to teach and learn the multiform an somewhat different histories of its provinces (current borders of France are very young in front of History, indeed!!! nothing eternel in it!) - the "Jacobines" won the french revolution and dreamed a monolitic state where all citizens are "equal" and "interchangeable" (the result is an inequallist country concerning social classes spite the verbal affirmations but with uniformised culture, just the contrary of what was to hope, for I think - so, genetic studies that could destroy the myth of collective uniformity beside "richness" of individual variability is a danger for the Republic! the other reasons concerning indiviual private protection are just a pretext, I believe - when french politic people speak about "decentralisation" they think "délocalisation of centralised services" with always the same central power -
 
If a can say something concerning France, I would say it is become a "jacobine" centralist state which always fear the regionalisms and has repulsion to teach and learn the multiform an somewhat different histories of its provinces (current borders of France are very young in front of History, indeed!!! nothing eternel in it!) - the "Jacobines" won the french revolution and dreamed a monolitic state where all citizens are "equal" and "interchangeable" (the result is an inequallist country concerning social classes spite the verbal affirmations but with uniformised culture, just the contrary of what was to hope, for I think - so, genetic studies that could destroy the myth of collective uniformity beside "richness" of individual variability is a danger for the Republic! the other reasons concerning indiviual private protection are just a pretext, I believe - when french politic people speak about "decentralisation" they think "délocalisation of centralised services" with always the same central power -

I agree. France is the only large country in Western Europe where the state does all it can to avoid recognising the unique ethno-cultural, linguistic and historical identities of its regions. Its ironic considering that France is the most diverse country in Europe in all these respects. The UK, Germany, Italy and Spain all have states or autonomous regions. Only France doesn't.
 
I agree. France is the only large country in Western Europe where the state does all it can to avoid recognising the unique ethno-cultural, linguistic and historical identities of its regions. Its ironic considering that France is the most diverse country in Europe in all these respects. The UK, Germany, Italy and Spain all have states or autonomous regions. Only France doesn't.

This is the laicism of which Atatürk adopted his kemalism and which yet makes it so hard for Turkey to become a democratic country. And they ALWAYS use France as prime example for their absurd political system. It always swings between a kemalist to a radical islamistic system.
 
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probably cause they dont want people to discover some illegitimate royalty
 
This is a very weird article. I have found French people on 23andme who have done it DNA testing though. Don't know if it was before that law was enabled.

I think this "law" is absolutely ridiculous. France always has the most ridiculous laws IMO. France is basically a Marxist totalitarian state.
 
Try illegitimate politicians and businessmen' kids.
I know the real reason why :) But I cannot state it here; as it is controversial and illegal.

I'll just say, in a subtler way; that France's laws are implemented with an agenda by Communist extremists who don't believe in "race".
 
I know the real reason why :) But I cannot state it here; as it is controversial and illegal.

I'll just say, in a subtler way; that France's laws are implemented with an agenda by Communist extremists who don't believe in "race".

It's true that the French government tries hard, through the media and education, to make its citizens believe that races and ethnicities don't exist. It is even illegal in France to make statistics about ethnic groups. Once immigrants have been naturalised, they are French and that's it. There are no statistics showing the actual percentage of people with this or that ancestry. That's the opposite of the USA where people are constantly asked to choose their racial group (Caucasian, Hispanic, African-American, Native American, etc.) when filling forms. The only way one can guess the number of people of Maghreban descent living in France, for instance, is to look at the total number of Muslim people (and deduct a few percent's for other ancestry).

But that's not the reason DNA are banned in France. The ban specifically targets paternity test and dates back from 1992, an age when it was impossible to predict a person's ancestry accurately through a DNA test (mind you it was still hard a few years ago).
 
I see what you're saying now. Still; I often wonder if these laws are more likewise to an extreme leftist Marxist agenda. Which is why the French haven't bothered to delete them.

I have loads of French ancestry myself; but I don't really like speaking the language very much; or even being in France. It just seems a bit demeaning to me. If I speak it, it would be the Cajun French version; which is very different from Standard French. And the Acadian accent is more appropriate to me than the Standard French one. I believe the Cajun French dialect is more archaic; and also evolved a little over time with slight few differences. So if I spoke to a French person from France with the Cajun French dialect; it would probably be like a Norwegian talking to a Swede somewhat.
 
It does seem bizarre that a Western European country, with a strong and deeply-rooted liberal tradition, would completely deny its citizens the right to learn more about themselves - not about other persons -, through the use of widely accepted, non-invasive, non-immoral scientific tests. It's a law that would be more fitting to the USSR, where the oppressive State always had an interest in blurring, if not downright erasing, all notions of ethnicity within such a huge and diverse country (it didn't matter if you were a Zoroastrian Martian, you were a Soviet and nothing more)
 
As has been pointed out innumerable times, this law has nothing to do with ancestry testing...it has to do with paternity testing. There is nothing unusual in limiting the situations in which paternity can be contested. The problem is that the law is rather badly written and is thus susceptible to over-reaching on the part of the state.
 
probably cause they dont want people to discover some illegitimate royalty

The french royalty became "illegitimate" once they made Napoleon Bonaparte emperor ...............
 

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