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OAccording to an NHS official, one in 10 is mistaken about the identity of his father, genetic tests for hereditary diseases are revealing.
The era of genomic medicine allows physicians to detect a growing number of preventive actions against diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's disease.
Some 220,000 such tests are performed each year by the NHS in England and Scotland.
However, Ian Cumming, head of Health Education England, the NHS's training body, said the hospitals were left in an ethical dilemma while they were unveiling embarrbading family secrets.
It is currently estimated that about 4% of the population does not know that the man called his father is not his true biological parent.
Mr. Cumming told the Hay Festival that in a decade, anyone who wanted to be tested for the genome could do it.
"But it is not without controversy," he warned. "If you look at people who have had genetic testing in the family for reasons other than trying to determine fatherhood, your father does not represent one in 10 people, according to you."
He said it was the dilemma: "Are we going to tell people, 'This is not your father,' or are we going to keep this information for ourselves? I do not think it would be ethically acceptable. "
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