Abstract
THE House of Lords Select Committee, to which the Bastardy (Blood Tests) Bill was referred after its second reading in February last (see Nature, Feb. 18, p. 294), has now made its report. It will be remembered that this Bill, which was introduced in the House of Lords in December, 1938, by Lord Merthyr, sought to enable courts of summary jurisdiction to order blood-group tests to be made in bastardy cases. The chairman of the House of Lords Committee was Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, and included among its members were Lord Dawson of Penn and the Bishop of Salisbury. The Committee gave it as its unanimous opinion that the qualities of blood underlying blood-grouping and the laws of inheritance governing the transmission of these qualities from parents to children are accepted by such a consensus of scientific opinion as to render it desirable in the interests of justice for this knowledge to be applicable to affiliation cases. After certain amendments, it recommsnded that the Bill bo passed into law. It was stressed by the Committee that although the tests can exclude paternity in about one case out of three only, nevertheless the tests might prevent injustice. The Committee was also satisfied that the risk of error in making blood-tests has been reduced to negligible proportions; and it noted that the public is becoming ready to accept the positive verdict of science when its evidence declares against the implication of paternity to a given individual. It is indeed remarkable—and the Committee commented on the fact—how great was the preponderance of opinion among medical and legal witnesses in favour of the use of blood-tests as evidence in affiliation cases; whilo, of such criticisms as were offered, none disputed the validity of blood-tests as evidence.
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Blood-group Tests of Paternity. Nature 144, 542 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144542b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144542b0