Father's Blood

Before a Connecticut justice of the peace one Edna Newton, 21, sulkily accused a Louis Rebuzzini, 28. of fathering her child. The justice believed her. Louis Rebuzzini hired a resourceful lawyer, who in turn hired Dr. Alexander S. Wiener, Brooklyn blood specialist. Dr. Wiener took samples of blood from mother, child and alleged father, examined the bloods this way & that according to the dicta of Nobel Laureate Karl Landsteiner. Last week litigants, lawyers and blood man appeared before a county court in New Haven.

While Edna Newton listened sulkily and Louis Rebuzzini sullenly, Dr. Wiener discoursed about blood types O. A. B & AB and certain substances called agglutinogens M & N, reasoned that if this-blood man fertilized that-blood woman, their offspring must have this-or-that blood and could not have such-or-such blood. All this meant that the Landsteiner blood groups can show only that a man is not a child's father. But not in every case can blood matching prove innocence. For example, two putative fathers may belong to the same blood group. Nonetheless, the blood groups suffice to clear one out of six falsely accused men.*

In the New Haven case Louis Rebuzzini happened to be that one. Miss Newton withdrew her charges, convinced that Dr. Wiener's thesis was as valid as her own maternity./-

*If the agglutinogens M & N are also considered, the chances of proving non-paternity (or non-maternity) are one out of three.

/-Lawyers of the American Medical Association have been unable to find any records of U. S. appellate courts passing on the validity of blood tests in paternity cases. But high courts have accepted the tests in Germany, Austria, France, England, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy.

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