It is a wise father that knows his own child, but today a man can boost his paternal (fatherly) wisdom——or at least confirm that he’s the kid’s dad. All he needs to do is shell out $30 for paternity testing kit (PTK) at his local drugstore——and another $120 to get the results.
再聪明的父亲也未必了解自己的孩子，但是如今男人可以提升其为人之父的智慧，至少可以确认他是孩子的父亲。他所要做的就是在当地药店里支付30美元买一个父子关系测试包（PTK），然后另支付120美元以获得该测试的各项结果。
注：第一句话为什么这么翻译，请看：blog.sina/s/blog_4982ed5c0100dumb.html More than 60,000 people have purchased the PTKs since they first become available without prescriptions last year, according to Doug Fog, chief operating officer of Identigene, which makes the over-the-counter kits. More than two dozen companies sell DNA tests directly to the public, ranging in price from a few hundred dollars to more than $2500.
Doug Fogg是Identigene (生产这种在药店可以出售的测试包的公司)的首席运营官，他说，自从去年PTK不需要处方就能购买以来，已经有超过6万人购买了该产品。超过24家公司直接向公众出售DNA检测工具，价格从几百美元到2500多美元不等。
Among the most popular: paternity and kinship testing, which adopted children can use to find their biolo
gical relatives and families can use to track down kids put up for adoption. DNA testing is also the latest rage among passionate genealogists——and supports businesses that o ffer to search for a family’s geographic roots.
其中最受欢迎的是父子和血缘关系检测，被收养的孩子可以利用它到自己的有血缘关系的亲属，而家庭也可以用它来到被人收养的孩子。DNA检测也得到了许多热心的家谱学专家的推崇，还为那些寻家族地域根源的服务公司提供了支持。
Most tests require collecting cells by swabbing saliva in the mouth and sending it to the company for testing. All tests require a potential candidate with whom to compare DNA.swabbing
多数测试需要从口腔唾液中获取细胞，并将唾液送至公司进行检测。所有的测试都需要一个潜在的对照者，以便进行DNA对比。
But some observers are skeptical. “There is a kind of false precision being hawked by people claiming they are doing ancestry testing,” says Trey Duster, a New York University sociologist. He notes that each individual has many ancestors——numbering in the hundreds just a few centuries back. Yet most ancestry testing only considers a single lineage, either the Y chromoso me inherited through men in a father’s line or mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down only from mothers. This DNA can reveal gen
etic information about only one or two ancestors, even though, for example, just three generations back people also have six other great-grandparents or, four generations back, 14 other great-great-grandparents.
但是，一些观察家们持怀疑态度。纽约大学的社会学家Troy Duster说，“那些声称可以进行血统测试的人在散播一种虚假的精确信息”。他注意到每个人都有许多祖先，仅几个世纪以前就有好几百个。但是大多数血统检测只考虑单一的血统，要么只考虑来自父亲的男性遗传Y染体，要么只考虑遗传自母亲的线粒体DNA。这个DNA只能显示一两个祖先的基因信息，即使是这样，仅仅上溯到3代之前，举个例子来说，人们还有6个曾祖父母，或者上溯到4代以前，人们还有14个曾曾祖父母（的基因信息是显示不出的）。
注：括号内的内容为上下文的逻辑意思。
Critics also argue that commercial genetic testing is only as good as the reference collections to which a sample is compared. Databases used by some companies don’t r ely on data collected systematically but rather lump together information from different research projects. This means that a DNA database may have a lot of data from some regions and not others, so a person’s test results may differ depending on the company that processes the results. In addition, the computer programs a
company uses to estimate relationships may be patented and not subject to peer review or outside uation.
批评家们还认为，商业性基因检测实际上也就是比对样本的参考资料库。一些公司使用的数据库里的数据并非系统收集所得，而是将不同研究项目的信息整合在一起。这意味某个DNA数据库可能会从某些地区收集到很多信息，而别的地区却没有收集到任何信息，所以一个人的测试结果会随着测试公司的不同而不同。此外，公司用来评估血缘关系的软件程序可能是其专利，所以这些软件缺乏同类比较或外界评估。
注：as good as 有两个常见意思：1. 和…一样好  2. 实际上

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