Bachelorette impregnated by dwarf stripper

Telegraph (UK)

"A Spanish woman has been forced to confess to cheating on her husband-to-be on her hen night with a dwarf stripper after she gave birth to a baby with dwarfism.

Her husband believed the baby was his and that it had been conceived during the honeymoon but his wife confessed to the infidelity after he repeatedly questioned doctors as to how the baby could have been born with dwarfism.

The woman has not been named, but according to local reports she felt compelled to tell her husband after questions were raised by friends who had accompanied her on the hen night, which took place at the beginning of the year."

 

It seems appropriate to link now to the excellent blogpost by Gene Expression that deflates the urban myth that 30% of all births are cases of "misattributed paternity." In the United States, the actual rate of men raising children whom they believe are their biological offspring but are not, is less than 1% (.08). [Which, of course, means that it happens.]

The crazy 30% rate comes from data from paternity testing firms. Obviously they have a biased sample -- only men who are highly suspicious that the kid they are raising is not theirs would pay for these tests (or appear on the Maury Povich show). And still, these highly suspicious fellows find out that 70% of the time, it actually is their kid.

Here's a link to an excellent explanation of dominant v. recessive genetic inheritance. (Too bad the author didn't read the question closely enough -- the reader is asking about how his kid got dwarfism, not worrying about whether or not his kid could get it. The author assures him that the kid is unlikely to get it -- but he already has it!) This post from The Tech at Stanford explains that most cases of dwarfism are caused by genetic mutations (in either the father's sperm or mother's egg), and not by inheritance as we usually think of it.