Yuri Melekhovets knows about people's heartbreak, the obsessive passions, the gnawing suspicions that eat away at a marriage. He knows these things from the specimens in his lab the dirty boxers, stained lingerie, sticky sheets.
Melekhovets is a geneticist.
He's lab director at Toronto's Paragon Genetics, which tests for infidelity extracting DNA samples from those sheets and shorts, cigarette butts, toothbrush, whatever.
"It's the application of forensics testing for family problems," he says. Think CSI: The Bedroom.
This is the season for infidelity, or at least suspicions of it. Paragon gets more requests more Fed- Exed undies in the summer.
But Melekhovets has happy news: There's about a 60 per cent chance it's just your imagination. That's how often the suspect stain is proven innocent. "The human imagination can create a big elephant from a small fly," says the geneticist.
He partly blames TV. Since all those forensics shows started, the dirty linens part of the business has flourished. Paragon does forensics, paternity and prenatal DNA testing, with the infidelity work accounting for 10 to 20 per cent.
People send in cut-out pieces of fabric or full, intact sheets, dresses or underwear that must be returned. (It's hard to explain to your wife why her expensive lingerie has a big hole snipped out.) One man, wary of a stain, brought in a family heirloom, an animal-skin rug.
Sometimes people ask Melekhovets why he does this testing, why he is destroying families. "I tell them, `No. We are helping people solve problems.'"
When he recently told a woman that the sample showed no evidence that her husband was fooling around, no traces of other human DNA, she was thrilled. "She kept saying, `Thank you, thank you ...'"
Even bad news can be helpful. One philanderer kept telling his curious wife she was crazy. When Paragon presented proof another woman's DNA the wife was relieved: she wasn't nutty.
The bad news can get tricky and costly. The suspicious spouse (as likely to be a husband as a wife) may turn Sam Spade, surreptitiously collecting hair samples, coffee cups, licked envelopes, chewed gum from that floozie friend or brawny pool boy to see if there's a DNA match. Infidelity testing runs from $300 to more than $1,000, depending on how many samples are analyzed.
One man was so sure his wife was cheating, he sent samples every few months over two years all results were negative before he gave up.
Samples arrive from across North America and Europe, Melekhovets explains, sometimes accompanied only by a note: "I will call in seven business days. My name is John."
Isn't Melekhovets curious about all the human dramas, the outcomes? The geneticist sighs. "Each case is somebody else's life. Sometimes there's a happy ending. Sometimes not. This is a laboratory, not a psychologist's office."
