After years of expansion into different DNA services, controversies around the company begin to surface — publicly. There’s a lawsuit against the company, journalists (including our co-host Jorge Barrera) start sniffing around; and a poodle is falsely identified as an Indigenous person. Meanwhile, prenatal paternity testing quietly disappears from the services on the Viaguard Accu-Metrics website. A legal note: Over the course of this podcast, a number of allegations are made against Viaguard Accu-Metrics and its employees. When asked, company owner Harvey Tenenbaum said he stands by the test, and that any errors were caused by customers during sample collection.
Chapter 1: What bold claim is discussed in this episode?
And there is this one receptionist.
She was so cruel. Every time I called and it was like, lady, I'm pregnant. Can you be nice? Obviously, you deal with these tests and you know the sensitivity of them. But, you know, do you have to be a jerk about it? I'm just trying to figure out my test results.
This goes on for six weeks, call after call, until finally, Sarah gets an answer. According to Viagra Documentrics, John is the biological dad. Micah's results?
Micah is inconclusive. And I was like, what does that mean? And she said, well, it's just inconclusive. And so I could send another sample in for Micah if I wanted to. But I asked... Why would I send another sample in if John is positive? She said, some people just want a definitive yes or no.
That's what Sarah wants. A definitive yes or no. So she drops another $200 on top of the $800 she's already shelled out. This time, she swipes Micah's used razor blades for the test. Micah is still in the dark about Sarah's doubts. She's now six months pregnant and still waiting for that yes or no.
I just had a sense of, I trust them, they'll give me the right results. And when I get them, then I'll know what to do.
But the results from Micah's sample come back as inconclusive for a second time. So Sarah breaks the news to Micah.
I told him that he was not the father and he didn't believe me. And I vaguely remember sort of a fight about, you know, I told him I got this result from this company. And I think he suggested, well, what about Micah? a second opinion. I said, no, I got the results. And I just believed that Vygard Acumetrix had given me the solid information.
It never crossed my mind that, oh, I'm going to get the wrong, I'm going to get some false positives today.
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Chapter 2: Who is Carol Reynolds-Boyce and what is her claim?
And it's the thing I was trying to avoid. And I tried to... figured that out with Viaguard Acumetrix and the one thing that I didn't want to happen happened anyway.
And once again she's on the phone.
Called Acumetrix sobbing like what's going on here? There's something wrong. She doesn't look like the baby you told me I was going to have.
She keeps asking to speak with Harvey but now Harvey is never around.
I was scared and I wanted to talk to somebody besides the receptionist, the main one. And she told me I had done this to myself. That's what she said. And it's like, yeah, that's true. But fuck you. Excuse my language. Like, you know, how dare you be a company that provides this service and then treat people like garbage, right?
So Sarah tells the receptionist, find me someone else to speak with.
She transferred me to the lab technician named Kyle. And Kyle told me that he had never seen this happen in the two years he'd been working there and said I would be refunded. He would call me back.
He never calls back. So she does the American thing. She lawyers up. And on the day of her daughter's second birthday, Sarah files a lawsuit against Acumetrix.
I really want to take this to court because I don't want this to ever happen again. I want them held accountable and I want them to be punished and to pay and not necessarily to me, but to pay such a large sum that possibly they go out of business.
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Chapter 3: What errors were found in the DNA testing process?
Okay, well, I mean, the issue is that two people separately submitted DNA samples to Viagard directly, and they received results that they had Native American ancestry, but they actually sent DNA samples from their dogs. So I need to speak with Mr. Tenenbaum about this because he's the company owner, right?
Yeah, okay, so I'm going to relay the message.
CBC News reporting Torpedo's Grand Chief Carl's group. He's eventually charged with fraud for selling those fake Indigenous status cards. Around the same time, he was also convicted for sex crimes involving a minor. But that case is unrelated to this DNA testing investigation. Carl is still facing trial on the fraud charges.
But what about Harvey and Acumetrix's responsibility for the indigenous ancestry testing? When I approach them, the company refuses interview requests. They send a statement in an email. It basically says these indigenous ancestry tests have no legal value anyway. And they blame the messed up results on the customers, who they say probably contaminated the samples.
It's Acumetrix's go-to explanation. They stop offering the indigenous DNA testing, but they're still in the dog DNA testing business. And dogs keep tripping Acumetrix up.
We're enlisting the help of three special pooches and sending their DNA to four companies who promise to identify a dog's breed with near 100% accuracy.
CBC's Consumer Affairs Show Marketplace is testing dog breed DNA companies. It's now March 2023, and one of the four companies tested is Viagard Acumetrix. Marketplace sends in DNA samples from three dogs for testing, but it also sends a sample from a human. The show's host, Travis Danraj, pretending it's from a dog.
The fourth dog, it's me.
The Danrej sample should come back as a failed test. But the Acumetrix result?
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