DNA tests for Argentine Clarin group heirs

[Viva_La_Revolution]

Source: BBC

An Argentine court has ruled that the heirs to the country's main media group must submit to DNA-testing, to see if they were born to left-wing prisoners killed by the military in the 1970s.

Judges ruled that Marcela and Felipe Noble Herrera - adopted children of the Clarin Group owner - must give direct samples such as blood or saliva.

They will be compared with samples on a genetic database linked to the missing.

The siblings object to the tests. Their mother says their adoption was legal.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13634035?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

[aquart]

1. How much money is at stake here?

[boppers]

2. Billions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grupo_Clar%C3%ADn

[nodehopper]

4. why is this about money? These cases have been going on for several years

I don't see how money is at stake here.

[aquart]

5. If the adoptions are voided, they are no longer legal heirs, are they?

Their adopted mother can choose to put them in her will. But she is also open, I would guess, to civil suits from the grandmothers and their families.

Money is not the issue in the other cases, but it is automatically a huge issue here. BECAUSE THERE IS A HUGE AMOUNT OF MONEY.

[nodehopper]

7. I've never read anything about adoptions being voided in these cases

Also presumably the couple in question could write a will to still leave their money to whoever they chose.

[aquart]

10. Uh huh.

And the DNA family could sue for damages?

[Judi Lynn]

3. The adopted heirs were fighting the blood test last year. From BBC News:

7 June 2010 Last updated at 18:17 ET
Argentine media heirs submit to 'Dirty War' DNA tests

Scientists in Argentina have begun DNA tests on the adopted heirs to a media empire to see who their natural parents are.

~snip~
Victim support groups first said in 2001 that they believed the biological mothers of Marcela and Felipe were among the hundreds of women who gave birth in clandestine torture centres and were then murdered.

~snip~
They have said there is no evidence that they were born in jail and seized from their biological parents, and that they have no desire to know more about their birth families.

"Our identity is ours. It's a private thing and I don't think it's up to the state or the Grandmothers to come and tell us what is ours," Marcela said.

More:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10254236

[dipsydoodle]

6. The mere objection

is a bit of a giveaway.

[nodehopper]

8. not necessarily

can you really not imagine why people would not want to go through this process? it might mean potentially your whole life imploding and realizing your parents were complicit in monstrous actions.

[rabs]

11. Just the opposite

The parents of these two young people were the VICTIMS of monstrous actions.

They may have even been among the hundreds of leftists who were thrown (many still alive after being tortured) from planes into the Atlantic by the Argentine military.

As for their lives imploding, any rational person would be interested in finding out who their real parents were. If they do not care, than their implosion is deserved.

[quakerboy]

12. I am sure that

You would be happy as a tick on a lazy bunny to learn that the people who raised you, who treated you like their kid and who you thought of and loved as your parents all these years actually were complicit in the death of your real parents and your entire life is a lie.

Yup. What rational person wouldn't want to have their face shoved in that? Obviously these (potential children of murdered parents) deserve whatever scorn and punishment can be found to heap upon them.


If its not clear enough, I feel the opposite is true. Children are not responsible for the actions of their parents, much less adopted parents.

[nodehopper]

13. "any rational person" is a fallacy

If "any rational person" would want to find that out, how come plenty of adopted children choose to never search for their "real" parents? Are they irrational? Whoever these people's biological parents are, the only "real" parents they know are their adopted ones.

People have very different emotional responses to different events; our theory of mind allows to entertain the possibility of others having different emotional reactions, without marginalizing them as "irrational." I absolutely agree that, if the allegations are true, their parents were victims of these actions, and I understand why these proceedings are necessary. However, I feel empathy towards people who may not want to entertain the possibility that the only parents they have known are a) not their parents and b) war criminals--I don't think that makes them "irrational" and I don't think it is up to you or me to judge what they "deserve" in a situation where they themselves were possible victims as well, and where they are forced into emotional turmoil that they did not choose, and that in general adopted children can choose to avoid.

If the allegations against their adopted parents are true, the children are victims as well; perhaps YOU in that situation would unequivocally want to know the truth, no matter how horrible, but not everyone's emotional responses are identical to yours, and you don't have the monopoly on "rational" or correct responses in a horrible situation like this one.

[Judi Lynn]

9. They seem to feel so much closer to an Argentinian billionaire media owner,

who completely whitewashed the Dirty War through her newspapers to the point it was socially appropriate in her social world, a woman to whom Videla was photographed raising a toast, to a couple of young leftists who were tortured relentlessly, the woman being forced to give birth, before they were both murdered.

In this case truth is far uglier than the most insanely brutal fiction.

[nodehopper]

14. they feel close to the people who are the only parents they have ever known

Which is understandable, and it would be strange if that were not the case. I don't understand the vitriol directed towards the children.