by Keith Syverson

Another testing controversy has arisen in the world of baseball.  This time it was not Alex Rodriguez or Roger Clemens testing positive for performance enhancing drugs, but rather it was an amateur baseball player from the Dominic Republic named Damian Arredondo "failing" a DNA test as part of an investigation to confirm his age.  It does not come as a big surprise that in an era where Bud Selig, the Commissioner of Major League Baseball (MLB), is trying to clean up the sport's image and punish cheaters such as those who use performance enhancing drugs, that the MLB is also testing to prevent other forms of cheating such as misrepresenting one's age.  A young prospect is valuable because it gives the potential signing team more time to develop the player and teach him how to be a successful hitter or pitcher in the Major League.  Additionally, as players age, they become more injury prone and are less productive as hitters.  Teams usually take a players age into account when offering a contract extension later in life.  For example, a 30-year-old player will generally be paid more and receive a longer contract then a 34-year-old player.

 Most baseball fans remember when Miguel Tejada, a Dominic Republic native, announced to the Houston Astros that he was in fact 33 years old and not 31, or when investigators discovered that a Washington Nationals prospect assumed an alter ego that was four years younger then his actual age.  In the aftermath of the steroid scandal, the MLB has established an investigative team taking extreme measures to ensure that this does not happen again by subjecting potential players and their family members to bone scans and DNA testing.

The MLB's vice president of investigation, Dan Mullin, dispatches investigators to the Dominican Republic to verify birth certificates, school records, and hospital records.  However, according to Mullin, these documents are neither certified nor notarized.  Players have been known to assume the identity of younger siblings or of a younger child of a neighboring family, just to appear two or three years younger.  Because of this uncertainty, MLB investigators order bone scans of the player and his siblings in conjunction with DNA tests of the family to confirm a familial relationship and the age of the player.

As at least one commentator has pointed out, testing for parentage is not the same as testing for genetic susceptibility for diseases.  It is true that comparing a few genetic markers to confirm a familial relationship is different from genetic testing for diseases.  The danger is that once the team has access to a player's and his family's genetic information, there's no stopping what investigators can test.  Testing for loci-associated genetic diseases is no more difficult then testing for parentage.  Once an investigator obtains a saliva sample or blood sample for DNA analysis, they can easily order more tests on top of the parentage analysis.  Direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies offer genome scans for as little as $400 that can reveal whether a person is susceptible to a particular disease or trait based solely on a saliva sample.  To obtain this information about someone, one need only mail in the saliva sample under a false name (or even claim it as his or her own) and the company will provide a detailed genetic analysis.  Many of the genetic associations reported are tenuous at best and most studies supporting the associations rely on data from subjects of European ancestry.  Because of this, the information received might not be reliable.

Even if the investigators only test the DNA sample for parentage, the results could be inconclusive and cause negative psychological impacts.  This kind of DNA test will only show if a child's parents are who he claims them to be, it cannot rule out the possibility that an athlete is assuming the role of a younger sibling.  As The New York Times article points out, there is possibility that the child could learn that his parents are not who he thought they were.  In addition to the psychological trauma of learning that the person the player thought was his father is not actually his dad, the player would probably not be signed because he would "fail" the DNA test.  Given the fact that the DNA tests are of limited use because they cannot tell a person's age and can determine only if the person is related to the people claimed, the potential harms outweigh the benefits.

In November 2009, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act will go into effect for employers, forbidding them from making employment decisions on the basis of genetic information.  The Act defines "genetic information" as information about an individual's genetic tests, and the genetic tests of family members of the individual.  A "genetic test" is "an analysis of human DNA, RNA, chromosomes, proteins, or metabolites, that detects genotypes, mutations, or chromosomal changes."  Testing a potential player for genetic diseases or genetic predispositions for genetic diseases and using this genetic information in an employment decision is the kind of discrimination GINA was drafted to prevent.  DNA tests to determine if two people are related detect and analyze a person's genotype at specific locations and compare that data with the purported family member.  A team using this information for the basis of a signing decision might also be in violation of GINA.   One thing is certain, GINA's sponsor, Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY), is unhappy.  "I wrote this law specifically to prevent DNA from being used against employees by employers," Slaughter says. 

The bottom line is, when a team is making a multi-million dollar investment, it is going to want to have the most information possible on a candidate.  The difference of two or three years may not seem like much, but one need only look at the Red Sox's David Ortiz from 2006 compared to David Ortiz of 2008 and 2009.  However, DNA testing to determine if a player is actually a member of the family he claims to be is unnecessary and could be counter productive.  The player could be assuming the identity of a younger sibling and the results would come back inconclusive or give a false positive.  This, in conjunction with the possibility for unauthorized genetic testing, makes the potential harm outweigh the benefit.