J Forensic Res ISSN: 2157-7145 JFR, an open access journal Forensic Medicine Issues on Methods of Identification in Court Ordered Paternity Testing – The Case of Portugal

doi:10.4172/2157-7145.S2-007 Copyright: © 2012 Machado H, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Official technical and scientific recommendations on standard procedures and quality control in the field of testing of paternity do not cover issues relating to methods of subjects ’ identification in the processing of paternity investigations that are compulsory for the individuals – parental testing ordered by courts. The aim of this paper is to explore the main issues posed to forensic laboratories when collecting samples for court ordered paternity investigation and therefore contribute to the ongoing debate on social and ethical implications of parental testing and open up new dimensions of this practice. The data was collected from a qualitative study carried out in forensic laboratories in Portugal, based on interviews conducted with forensic experts. The methods for identifying individual