First the Affair, Then Paternity Test, Then Abortion?

By AMMU KANNAMPILLY

The illegal use of DNA testing to determine the sex of fetuses in the developing world is widely known, but now, concern is growing in the United Kingdom that the availability of prenatal paternity tests is encouraging women to terminate fetuses that are the result of extramarital affairs.

The illegal use of DNA testing to determine the sex of foetuses in the developing world is widely...

The illegal use of DNA testing to determine the sex of foetuses in the developing world is widely known, but now, concern is growing in the UK that the availability of prenatal paternity tests is encouraging women to terminate foetuses which are the result of extramarital affairs.

(ABC News Photo Illustration)

According to Dan Leigh, the marketing director with DNA Solutions, a global DNA test firm with offices in 40 countries, the number of women opting for the prenatal paternity test shot up from 20 in 2002 to 500 last year.

"The testing technology has improved vastly," Leigh told ABC News. "It's become much more accessible."

"It's fairly common to see women take this test after their husbands have found out about an affair and want to know if they have fathered the child their wife is carrying," Leigh said.

"But 75 percent of the cases involve women coming in of their own volition; they want to know whose child they are carrying," he said.

As for the concerns over women terminating their pregnancies as a result of the tests, Leigh demurred, saying that "there are no statistics to support that, but it [abortion] happens when the husband turns out not to be the biological father."

"It's a sad situation," he said. "It often ends either in divorce or the husband insists on terminating the pregnancy."

The company encourages women who apply to take the prenatal paternity test to also see a therapist. But, although 90 percent of the company's U.S. customers consult with a therapist, only 20 percent of its U.K. clients do, because "the idea of seeing a counselor is just not popular in this country," Leigh said.

And, despite criticism from anti-abortion rights organizations, Leigh insisted that DNA Solutions does "not encourage abortion or termination of pregnancies."

"We are offering the chance to clarify the truth," he said.

"Frankly," he said, "the risk to a baby from an amniocentesis is a much bigger concern for us, and we are working on being able to conduct the test using a blood sample from the mother's arm instead, find a noninvasive way of doing it."

Anti-abortion rights campaigners like Josephine Quintavalle, director of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, dismiss such concerns, saying that, "unless you are conducting a test to help a baby -- for health reasons, say -- there is no significant reason to carry out any procedure that might hurt a baby."

"I don't think we should condone any form of testing that might lead to either sex selection or termination of the fetus," she said.

But the boom in prenatal paternity testing may be a mirage, according to other DNA testing organizations.

Mark Pursglove, the international operations manager for the U.K.-based International Biosciences, said that his company performed "about one or two tests a month" and that the paternity tests were not necessarily tied to adultery.

"Last year," he said, "two of the cases we dealt with involved rape victims who wanted to find out if they were carrying the rapist's babies."

The supposed popularity of these tests has been overstated, he said.

"The process costs between £800-£900 [$1,133-$1,274]," he said. In contrast, DNA Solutions offers tests beginning at $332.

Pursglove said that "the clinics we use for the test won't take up a case if they believe that a termination might be the result."

Furthermore, all clients must "speak to a gynecologist, an obstetrician or a general practitioner before the test is carried out."

Although the company forbids any "gender inquiries about the fetus," unless the person or couple involved explicitly discusses the possibility of termination, the company goes ahead with the test, Pursglove said.

But the expectation of total honesty from a woman caught in such a sensitive situation may just be too high, according to some.

And many anti-abortion rights campaigners believe the chances are slim that anyone would undergo a risky test costing hundreds of dollars without any intention to terminate the pregnancy in case the test turns up a disturbing result.

As this testing technology becomes more sophisticated and more accessible, however, it's likely that paternity tests will only become more commonplace, even as the battle to hammer out an ethical stance on the matter shows no signs of letting up.

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How to survive Casa Bonita, the world's weirdest Mexican restaurant

I recently visited Casa Bonita for the first time, and I'm still trying to recover. No, that's not an indigestion joke about the food, sub-par as it may be. Actually, my mind was blown in a good way. As I'd been told, there's no easy way to describe the Lakewood institution, which bills itself as "The World's Most Exciting Restaurant" - a pronouncement that very well might be true. The multi-story, Mexican-themed behemoth includes a 30-foot-tall waterfall, cliff divers, fire jugglers, strolling mariachi bands, a pirate cave, magicians, puppet shows, skee-ball machines... you get the idea. As one of my colleagues put it, it's like Disney had sex with Tijuana and left the goofy-looking bastard to fend for itself in a random strip mall on Colfax.
I loved every insane second of our trip there - except for the fact that I felt like those kids in the movie SpaceCamp who were accidentally launched into space and had no fucking idea what the hell to do. There was just way too much stuff going on at Casa Bonita and no helpful little robot named Jinx (yes, that's a second SpaceCamp reference) to help me figure it all out.

With that in mind, we here at Westword decided, as a community service, to create a Casa Bonita survivor's guide. Follow these rules and you'll have a hell of a time -- who knows, you may even live to eat again.

1) Do your research. There's no way to fully prepare for the sensory-overload experience that is Casa Bonita, but a good first step would be to watch Trey Parker and Matt Stone's South Park documentary about the place. We're using the term "documentary" because while every other South Park episode features bizarre characters and outlandish scenarios, the actual Casa Bonita is so ridiculous they just slapped it into the show looking exactly how it looks in real life. We're also pretty sure children really have been willing to kill others for a chance to go to the restaurant, so Cartman's attempt to kill Butters so he can take his place at a party there is completely factual. And finally, just like Cartman, chances are you will end up running around Casa Bonita like a crack addict, all the while singing the song, "Casa Bonita! Casa Bonita! Food and fun in a festive atmosphere!"

2) Order the taco salad. As everyone knows, you don't go to Casa Bonita for the food -- and that's even if you ignore all those rumors about piles of empty cat food cans in the kitchen. Unfortunately, they make you order a full meal to get in the door, but it's best to just write that off as the admission fee. A good strategy is to not eat any of your $12 meal and make sure you have at least $12 worth of fun while you're there (or make sure you have $8 worth of fun and eat at least $4 worth of sopapillas). Or, if you really need some sustenance, take it from us and order the taco salad. Unlike every other option on the menu, the "mystery meat" with this entree comes on the side, so you can eat your salad without wondering too much about cat food. Sure, it's the worst taco salad you will ever eat, but finding a way to make a taco salad this bad is sort of an achievement in itself, and we're all about giving credit where credit is due.

3) Don't go for the fried ice cream. This is where they get you. Right after you've ordered your taco salad, the server will undoubtedly ask, "Would you like fried ice cream with that?" And that's just not fair. Any time someone asks you to partake in something that involves ice cream and deep-frying, the innate human response is to heartily acquiesce. We can't help it; the response involves the same part of our reptilian brain that takes over whenever we hear the words "open" and "bar" in the same sentence. But fight this urge you must, because already waiting for you at the end of your lousy meal is the dessert to end all desserts - something even better than fried ice cream: Casa Bonita's sopapillas. You have to wonder how these powdery pillows of goodness could come from the same kitchen that manages to screw up cheese quesadillas. And did we mention they're free? In other words, the fried ice cream is for suckers.

4) Demand a table by the waterfall. Casa Bonita employees are like the Navy SEALS of waitstaff. The place is a well-oiled machine, a perfectly calibrated cadre of maître d's, busboys and margarita servers, so it's only natural not to complain when they sit you in the mine shaft or spooky forest or some other forlorn corner far away from all the action; they seem to know best. But stand strong. You came here for the flame-juggling, the cliff-diving, the inappropriate shenanigans involving make-believe natives and a guy in a gorilla suit, damn it, and you're not going to take anything less than a table by the waterfall, where all the good shit goes down. Yes, they'll make you wait a bit for a table to open up, but since you've already been waiting in line for an hour, a few more minutes won't hurt.

5) Order beer by the bucket. Just like how characters in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy need to eat lots of peanuts to make up for the salt and protein they lose from going through matter transference beams, your best chance of making it out of Casa Bonita without losing too much sanity in the process is to drink beer. Lots of it. Unless, of course, you already dropped acid in the parking lot.

6) Don't tip the strolling mariachis. These guys may seem cute in their adorable wide-brimmed hats, but really they're as single-minded and debilitating as suckerfish. Slip 'em a greenback and they'll never leave your side until you're hemorrhaging dollars to their merciless, unending tunes. Then again, maybe it's worth the dough to have your own Mexican theme music wherever you wander, especially if the musicians take requests. It would be pretty sweet to stroll by some hotties as your personal band plays a mariachi version of the theme from Shaft. Better yet, convince them to perform the Benny Hill Show music while you get chased around by the guy in the Chiquita the angry Gorilla suit.

7) Avoid Black Bart's Cave. Of course you want to make the most of your time at Casa Bonita. By all means check out the puppet show, the magician, the arcades and everything else. But whatever you do, avoid Black Bart's Cave. That place is scary - and we're not referring to the stupid cackling, glowing plastic skull on the wall. We're referring to what gets left all over the cave when the ten-year-old who's had one too many tacos loses his shit because of the stupid cackling, glowing plastic skull on the wall. Take it from us: You don't want to go home smelling like the curse of Black Bart.

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The Dish: The Baskin Robbins Chocolate Oreo Milkshake, the "Worst Food" in America

By Ian Froeb

Men's Health magazine has released its annual "Worst Foods" list. Scoring the top spot as the absolute worst food in the country? A large Chocolate Oreo Shake from Baskin Robbins. This bad boy has 2,600 calories, 135 grams of fat (59 of which are saturated), 263 grams of sugar and 1,700 milligrams of sodium.

And now it sits on my desk, taunting me.

Now, I don't blame Baskin Robbins for selling this. No one's forcing you to buy a Chocolate Oreo Shake in any size, let alone large -- unless you're a food blogger desperate for content on Friday, that is. Frankly, I bet Baskin Robbins will sell more of these now that Men's Health has declared it the country's "worst food" than it ever did before. I mean, I never would have thought to buy one.

It's hard to say just how much ice cream goes into this thing. The man who made mine used four or five GIANT scoops of ice cream. It wasn't mixed using the store's traditional milkshake mixer but rather in a blender, which was placed inside a contraption that looked like a blast shield. I guess that many calories spun at a high rate speed have the potential for an explosion.

Ironically, for all those calories, the Chocolate Oreo Shake's texture is kinda thin. It certainly lacks the lung-draining thickness of a classic soda-fountain shake. And all that crumbled up cookie gives it a grainy feel. A colleague astutely compared it to a protein smoothie loaded with whey powder.

The most unappetizing part -- assuming, for a second, that you somehow didn't know it was a heart attack in a plastic cup -- has to be the color. The same colleague and I just had this exchange:

Colleague: "It looks blueberry-flavored. You expect there to be berries."

Me: "It looks Dockers flavored. It's khaki."

No, I didn't eat the whole thing. In fact, three or four sips were more than enough. Those had to be 200-300 calories by themselves. Too bad we retired Keep It Down.

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