You've seen those adverts offering the chance to discover your ancestry by providing a DNA sample for analysis. By the time you've filled in your details, they've upsold you with a load of extras you don't need. The kit comes through the post next week. You do the test, post it back, and a month later you get the results and discover you are 0.004% related to someone in Papua, New Guinea. Then a week after, you receive an email from a long-lost relative, a Nigerian prince (who knew), who needs your help to save the family fortune from corrupt officials. 'Just give me your bank details and we can hide it there. I trust you cousin.' Or worse still, I've heard of guys getting claims for maintenance from an unknown brood of children who appeared out of the woodwork, because the guy's results have been added to the test company database. It's no wonder I'd given the whole business a miss.
But last year, I stumbled across the Russian website, `Who's your Daddy, offering instant on-screen analysis of your DNA sample for the Christmas special price of $5 with no complicated form filling. It sounded like a great deal so I thought I would treat myself. I filled in my credit card details and was quickly transferred into an online chat session with Dr Ivana Tugwanoff, a genetic scientist with the Moshennichestvo Institute in Moscow. (It all seemed so legit, but sadly I've since discovered moshennichestvo is the Russian word for fraud.)
Dr Ivana was blonde, attractive and in her late twenties. She sat behind a desk wearing a white lab coat and serious black framed glasses. Her hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense pony tail, although she wore fire engine red lipstick and matching nail polish, which I thought was a bit risquΓ© for a serious research establishment. She explained they could offer such a competitive service because they were using patented technology developed for the Russian space program search for life on other planets. Their method allowed them to remotely analyze a DNA sample placed on the computer screen. I was amazed, but she reminded me Russia were the first nation to send a man into space, and you can't argue with that, can you?
She pressed a button on her keyboard and a hashed box appeared on my screen. That was the sample area. Dr Ivana told me to lick my finger and slide it on the box. I did this, then a white bar appeared across the top of the screen and moved down to the bottom. This was the scanner that would read my sample.