I'm a novelist trying to figure out (simple googling failed me) the
answers to these questions: (1) when, what year, would it have been
first possible to use a sperm sample to determine if a child belonged
to the donor? (2) if  this sample were "dry" as in monica lewinksy's
dress, when historically could someone have been able to take such a
dry sperm sample in and determine who it belonged to? (3) if you were
interested in whether this (dry) sample was FERTILE... when would that
have been first possible?

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Clarification of Question by charidea-ga on 13 Sep 2005 10:55 PDT

So, prior to 1985, if you were trying to find out if someone was the
father, how did they do that? I can see that paternity and fertility
are separate issues, but I had this idea that someone could test for
paternity (assuming, perhaps wrongly, they had to use sperm) and find
out not only are you not the father but, buddy, you're sperm is
infertile.
charidea

You are asking about "DNA fingerprinting."  This Wikipedia site lists
the first cases based on this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_fingerprint#Cases

This site says that the method was invented in 1985:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_fingerprint

So the theoretical answer to your first two points would seem to be 1985.

If a dry sample had been fertile and that could be determined?
I certainly don't know, but men can have both fertile and infertile
sperma, so it would seem immaterial  - to me, at least (well, for the
plot, not personally).  That is to say, if it were proven that it was
infertile, that would not mean that all other sperma from the
"episode" were also infertile.
But again, I cannot imagine a context in which that would matter, but
it is your story.  I seriously doubt that this could be determined.
A researcher had a lock on your question and most probably found the
hard information but could not find a source to answer this.
I hope this is of some help.
Myoarin

Call your local sperm bank or hospital (if they have a department that
assists people in having children). They can tell you how they
determine if sperm are viable. They are usually listed in the yellow
pages or you could get a referral
from an OB/Gyn.

i can see i am asking more than one question here. the more important
question isn't when DNA genetic fingerprinting was discovered (thanks,
I can see it's 1985 from above wikipedia source) but when was
paternity testing using sperm ("hey, that's not my kid!") brought into
(common? vs experimental?) usage.
thanks.

Hi charidea,

I think the confusion is that one does not do paternity testing using
sperm (usually it's a skin or blood sample that is used), so it was
never "brought into common." Since it is possible to use sperm as the
DNA source  for genotyping (identifying the rapist) or paternity
(although not standard) myoarin's answer is correct:  "the theoretical
answer to your first two points would seem to be 1985." As early as
1985 the technology existed.

To my knowledge dried sperm (ie on a dress) is not viable for normal
conception. You might find that if the material is scraped off and
rehydrated it could be used for microinjection into an egg, but even
in this scenario, your chances of creating an embryo are very low.

Hi charidea,

I think that prior to "DNA finger printing" paternity was largely
determined by other visible/measureable markers like blood type/RH
factor.

I think that in some cases sperm samples might be tested both for
disease markers (genetically heritable diseases) and
viability/fertility when couples are using a fertility specialists to
conceive. These are distinct tests though. For genotyping the sperm is
destroyed to extract (make available) the DNA, you wouldn't be able to
conclude anything about fertility.