You are a judge in a civil trial where a young man is attempting to prove...

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Biology

You are a judge in a civil trial where a young man is attemptingto prove that he is the illegitimate child of a very wealthy manwho has recently died. He wishes to be included in the distributionof the wealth. After considering all the testimony about how thisperson was conceived, the key evidence seems to come down to twomain facts. The wealthy man and the mother of the young man areboth deaf but the young man is not. Therefore the lawyer of thefamily suggests that the wealthy man is not the father. The mother,wealthy man, and young man all have O, MM, Rh blood type at thephenotypic level but a genotyping screen indicates that the wealthyman is actually I^AI^A hh blood type. How doyou interpret the evidence presented and how does it influence yourdecision in this case?

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3.8 Ratings (346 Votes)

Let us begin with the data We know that the wealthy man is deaf and the young mother is deaf However we do not know if they are genetically deaf Most of the people who are deaf acquire deafness and hence it is not heritable Even with genetic deafness there are several genes that are known to play in a myriad fashion to control this phenotype Thus the probability that a deaf couple would conceive a deaf child is higher than the probability of nondeaf people conceiving a deaf child However this probability is very low Thus the fact that the young man is not deaf implies the wealthy man is not his father is a feeble statement Now coming to the blood groups of these individuals We know that their phenotype is O MM Rh These are three different blood group systems The first See Answer

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